The Extraordinary Educators Podcast
Best practices, tips, and stories to help you be extraordinary in your classroom and beyond, featuring Curriculum Associates' Manager, Voice of the Customer, Hayley Browning.
The Extraordinary Educators Podcast
Strategies for Student Engagement with Danielle and Sari
Looking for engagement strategies as students head back to school? Danielle and Sari have three great ideas that can be used in your classrooms! Danielle begins by talking about the power of using student interest surveys. She then dives in to creating and using data folders for students. She also shares about the importance of a name -- especially having students explain the story of their name, and how to pronounce it correctly. Danielle and Sari wrap up the episode by taking a closer look at these strategies through specific examples from Danielle's time in the classroom and her time working with teachers.
Visit CurriculumAssociates.com/blog/3-tips-for-empowering-teachers for a blog by Felita Reed, all about empowering new teachers! Follow us on Twitter at @CurriculumAssoc and Instagram at @MyiReady, and email ExtraordinaryEducators@cainc.com to contact us with feedback, questions, or if you want to be a guest!
Curriculum Associates presents the Extraordinary Educators Podcast with host Danielle Sullivan and Sari Laberis your tips, best practices and successes to improve your teaching and leadership and drive student growth and learning. We're here for you.
Danielle Sullivan:Hi everyone, it's Danielle.
Sari Laberis:It's Sari, and this week it is just the two of us, and we are excited to chat about ways to engage students as you come back to the classroom towards the end of the summer or this fall. So, Danielle, I know you've been working a lot with educators in person talking about ways to continue to keep students motivated throughout the year. What sort of strategies or practices are top of mind for you and the teachers you've been working with?
Danielle Sullivan:So I had the privilege of just supporting a whole bunch of educators in Mississippi and I want to share three things that are universal, still really great strategies to think about as you return to school. The first one please, please, please, ask students about themselves in a student interest survey. You could either do an electronic survey, you could do a paper-based survey, but not only could you just ask them about themselves, but then you can take the opportunity to use that information and they can create an artifact from that, for example. The second strategy that ties together is creating a data folder or a student specific folder. So not only can you ask students about themselves, then they could decorate that folder with things that they love and therefore you're creating a data folder for students where they can put their i-Ready data, they can put their state assessment scores from last year, because you never get those on time. They can put things about, they can put the student interest survey within the folder, so then they have a folder about them.
Danielle Sullivan:So middle school teachers, high school teachers, elementary teachers all levels of teachers can have students have their own type of data folders. And the third activity that we have shared in the podcast before, but it's worth mentioning again is ask students about the story of their name and how to pronounce their name correctly, so you want to get to know them, you want to ask them the story of their name and you want to create a data folder so you could actually do it all in one. You could have students write the story of their name, put it in the data folder, fill out the student interest survey, put it in the data folder. Then when they take the first diagnostic or whatever assessment you have, you put that in and then students start collecting artifacts of learning that can be in a place in your classroom.
Sari Laberis:Thank you for sharing all of those. Going back to the first one for a minute, do you feel like the follow through or the, I guess, showing students that you're actually using what they answered on the interest survey is almost as important, if not more, than the actual survey. Say I'm a teacher and I get all of these -- I get 30 surveys back because I teach third grade. What do I do next with this information? Because I want to show my students. I read their surveys and I care about them and I know them. But what if I know what they like to do on the weekends or how many siblings they have, or you know? What do I do with that?
Danielle Sullivan:So one idea that I share with middle school educators, and I'll share it with you all, is take that information and create a connection snippet at the beginning of your class. So, knowing that Susan loves soccer, maybe have a soccer meme to start the day and then another student's interest to start the day. You could do a meme. You could do a picture. Another teacher which she did, which is really awesome she had students send her photos and she printed them out and had a photo collage corner. So when kids did really cool things throughout the year that they loved, she actually I know y'all printed a photo. I know we don't print photos anymore, we are an age of digital, but she had. She printed photos with students. She takes selfies with students. So not only did she share, she had them, she asked them about themselves, but she had them send photos with them doing wonderful things and it stayed in their classroom. So you could make it a daily activity.
Danielle Sullivan:As you know, as students are coming in, every day a different student gets highlighted something they love. You could have a photo collage. Or what I did is I knew that my students loved hunting. I tried to weave that into what I did for teaching. So you also want to take some of those things and actually use that in your teaching. Like if you're doing a math problem and someone loves to cook, can you call out that oh all right, caitlin, you love to cook. Remember, blah, blah, blah Like just letting them know that you're valued and seen. Another thing that doesn't take a lot of time is having students write you letters on things that are going well for them and they could mail it to you, quote, unquote, or you could have a space where they can put little notes and you can write them notes back. But it's all around like getting to know them and using that.
Sari Laberis:Super helpful, Thank you. I just have that song Getting to Know you from the King and I stuck in my head.
Danielle Sullivan:Yes, getting to know you.
Sari Laberis:Okay, that's great because I think, similar to, we don't assess students if we're not going to use the data for something right, like you don't want to have them take this really cool survey and then, not you know, show them that you read it and understand it. So I think that's really helpful, just incorporating it into your practice and remembering their preferences and showing them that you care For the. For the second one, the data folders what are kind of the use cases for those? How often are students pulling them out? I imagine it'd be really helpful during family conferences. If the student is there supporting the conference, they actually have the, the the assessments the folder.
Sari Laberis:Yeah, all the different pieces to show as they carried around from them from class to class in middle school. Just a little bit more tactical on how, how you see this working.
Danielle Sullivan:Right, just like you might wear a smart watch and collect all your fitness data, but if you ever look at it, does it help you lose weight? No, it does not, from personal experience. So I think, creating the daily habit or weekly habit, you can even have students check their folder on Friday. They could add, choose a piece of work they did that week they were really proud of and add it to the folder. Obviously you want to use it for having data conversations multiple times a year parent teacher conferences but make it something that's that's that's real actionable and that's why I'm saying adding their student interest survey to the folder, the story of their name to the folder, their data. Then you can even have them, once a month, revisit their student interest survey and revise it, because kids change, right.
Danielle Sullivan:So you may like soccer one day and then the next day you hate it. If you're a middle school teacher, you know what I'm talking about, so have it be a living, breathing document. You may want to even create a binder that students can add to. You know, whatever works for you, but put it I've seen this in rooms where it's in a really accessible part of the classroom to that students can, can, can access it. If you're a middle school teacher, you want to make sure that it's like, but also somewhat secure, not like a locking key, but like on a shelf where they can come and grab it and then put it back on elementary teacher.
Danielle Sullivan:I don't know if kids have desks nowadays, lockers. You don't want to keep in the locker because it will disappear, but put it in a place where they feel ownership over it and and you can revisit it weekly, bi-weekly. But please use it and they can keep adding to it.
Sari Laberis:I think that's the important key right the ownership piece. It literally and figuratively cannot be out of their reach, because then they don't feel like it's theirs, right? That is all the time we have for today. Thank you so much, Danielle, for imparting all this wisdom. I'm really excited to hear about all of our listeners using these strategies as you head back and build relationships with new students this coming school year. So we are thinking about you all and cheering you on and please, please, please remember to subscribe. It really helps us reach more educators like you and that way, new episodes will automatically be added to your queue wherever you listen to podcast.
Danielle Sullivan:Thanks so much.
Sari Laberis:Get inspired by following us on social media and please tag us in your posts. On Twitter @curriculumassoc, and on Instagram @myiready. If you have feedback about the podcast, a topic of interest, or to be a guest, email ExtraordinaryEducators@cainc. com. Subscribe where you listen to podcasts and if you'd like to help more educators like you join the conversation, please leave a review.
Danielle Sullivan:Remember, be you, be true, be extraordinary. The Extraordinary Educator Podcast is produced by Curriculum Associates. Editing by Whiteboard Geeks, social media by Atziri Hannon, guest booking by Sari Laberis. Production by Hayley Browning. This podcast is copyrighted materials and intellectual property of Curriculum Associates.