Blog 6

What strategies does the teacher use to actively engage the students? How effective are these?

The teacher uses several different strategies to actively engage the students. When she asks a question she will often tell the students to think of the answer in their head, then they all shout the answer out loud together. If she hears multiple answers they talk about it as a class. She uses a lot of games to engage the students. It gets them moving and motivated. Sometimes they are with a partner, sometimes it is as a class. She also does a lot hands on activities or practical applications. For example, she has dart frogs in her classroom. When they learn about the life cycle, she brings some of their eggs to school and lets the first graders watch the eggs hatch and turn into tadpoles, and the tadpoles turn into frogs. 

These strategies tend to be very effective. The students are happy to be in school because they recognize that they are learning. They also have a lot of fun. They rush to the frog tank each morning, for example, to see the new changes in their baby frogs. They are moving and engaging with the other students around them. The teacher does an excellent job of shaking things up and keeping things interesting.