Blog Entry #5

"What strategies does the teacher use to actively engage the student and how effective are these strategies?"

There are a couple of things the teacher does to make sure the students are actively engaged that I am really fond of. One of them is she does the names on the popsicle sticks, so that when she asks a question she just draws a stick out to see who is going to answer. When I was in elementary school I know I hated this. I never wanted to be the one who was called on, but now looking at it from a teacher perspective I think its a really smart way to do things. Students don't want to get the answer wrong, or at least I know that I didn't want to because I would have been embarrassed and felt bad. So by having that little pressure that it might be them thats called on I think it keeps everyone on guard and paying more attention than they would be if they knew someone could just raise their hand.

Another thing she likes to do is that when she can see everyone is losing focus and getting a little bored she tries to improve a physical activity to go with her lesson. Even if its just doing a lap around the school and having them point things out that go along with what their learning. Or going outside and playing some kind of game. She just likes to bring a little bit of fun into situations but still make sure they are learning and staying on track. One example of this is that they were learning about multiplication and working on their math, you could tell everyone was not  fan. So she decided to walk around the school and have a scavenger hunt to see who could find the most numbers and or math symbols and whoever got the most got a little treat. It sounds so simple but they were all so excited to get up and walk around and stop staring at paper even if it was just for 5 minutes.