Increasing Student Engagement

A widely observed behavior in students is their decrease in motivation. Many will label students as being ‘lazy’ or ‘careless’ with their work when in reality multiple factors are influencing their motivation to do well in school. Two kinds of motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic, are the primary influences on how students behave in school. Intrinsic motivation is very important because it is what makes students want to learn more because the reward is self-satisfaction and enjoyment in the tasks they are doing. If a student is more motivated by extrinsic motives it means they are working by external pressures or constraints such as grades. These students will tend to show more signs of extrinsic motivation, which in turn decreases intrinsic motivation. This decrease in intrinsic motivation is what sets many students apart from their seemingly more successful peers. In a study done by Henderlong and Lepper in 2002, it was shown that too much focus on extrinsic values leads to an overall decrease to perform in school because the intrinsic motivation has decreased. This also shows that intrinsic motivation is in fact what leads to students being motivated in school and in the classroom. Overall, intrinsic motivation is crucial to student wellness in terms of behavior, academics, and emotional wellbeing. Authoritative figures in the classroom such as teachers have the most influence on student motivation whether they are aware of it or not. This being said teachers

Engaging students in the classroom can be a difficult task. Understanding the process of how students learn can help a teacher adapt the lesson to meet the needs of all students. I will encounter students that are not intrinsically motivated so I will need to find different ways to motivate each and every student. Understanding how my students learn can provide me with insights as to how to help each student learn which will minimize classroom management problems.

Every student is different, from how they learn to how much effort do they put in when studying. But with the right teacher guiding them to success, nothing is impossible. So, how do we motivate the future generation to succeed in school? The Perils and Promise of Praise, by Carole S. Dweck. The author focus on how to motivate students to succeed in school. From how you talk to them, motivate them to learn and rewarding them.

Creating lessons that students actually want to participate in is always considered at planning. While there are standards that must be taught and best practices for teaching these standards, engagement must also be addressed to complete the learning package. Silver and Perini believe that “if we do not design lessons and units that will strengthen students commitment to learn, then we cannot expect them to take an active or in-depth approach to learning” (2010). With this in mind, differentiating lessons according to students’ interest helps ensure that students are motivated and are able to gain deeper level understanding. When students are interested in what they are learning, they are able to bring passion to their work.

To assist students to “read with purpose and anticipation,” Vacca et al. (2014, p. 173) suggests, in their book Content Area Reading: Literacy and Learning Across the Curriculum, that teachers need to “create an instructional context” that activates their students’ “prior knowledge” and helps them to become interested in a lesson. Throughout chapter six, “Activating Prior Knowledge and Interest,” Vacca et al. (2014, pp. 172-173) explain instructional strategies that can lead students to “read with purpose and anticipation.” This chapter presents the reader with a plethora of instructional strategies and means for applying them, along with example for real educators. As I journeyed through this chapter, I discovered many instructional strategies,

For this assignment, I chose the article Motivating Students to Read in the Content Classroom: Six Evidence-Based Principles by William Brozo and Sutton Flynt. This article first talks about how a survey of motivation to read showed a large majority of fourth graders say reading was not their favorite activity and they did not like to read frequently. The authors proposed six ways to get children more involved in reading, starting with elevating their self-efficiency. Students who possess high, school-related self-efficiency outperform their less-engaged peers. Teachers can create conditions for students that are associated with increased perceptions of competence and the student will consequently sustain an effort to be successful. The next point made in this article is to engage interest in new learning. Basically this means to generate interest in new content, making students more likely to put forth necessary efforts to read and learn the new material. “This realization should lead teachers to incorporate a variety of instructional practices that embrace multiple forms of literacy, multiple sources of information, and student choice

Graves, M. F., Juel, C., & Graves, B. B. (2011). Teaching Reading in the 21st Century. Motivating All Learners (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson Education.

A growing body of researchers claim that if students are not motivated and engaged in reading, they will not achieve their full literacy potential (Gambrell, 2011; Serravallo 2015; Warner, 2014; Irvin et al., 2007; Parsons et al., 2015). How and why would they read a “broad range of high-quality, increasingly challenging” texts if they are not interested? Research now shows that engagement and reading achievement actually have a symbiotic relationship, such that they must exist simultaneously (Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000, as cited in Springer, Harris, & Dole, 2017). As students become more engaged in reading, they develop an increased level of competence, which supports their literacy achievement (Irvin et al., 2007; Springer, Harris, & Dole, 2017). As students’ reading abilities increase, they hold a greater desire to continue reading, along

* Collaborating Listening and Viewing Guide (CLVG) - it is a lesson framework to help students learn information observed and/or heard.

When it comes to research at any level of education, it is quite crucial and important to master the technique of how it is done. Learning also happens at an intense point in research and not everyone can excel in it. It also turns to cultivate a lot of thinking.

"Interest is an important factor of learning" (Alvermann 2013, p 133). Student interest and motivation are married together. Teacher's understand that when students are interested, they are more engaged and motivated. Reading is one area where many students lack interest. Pre-reading strategies help to spark student interest before they dive into the content. There are numerous strategies, but the most common are graphic organizers, KWL charts, anticipation guides, and list-group-label strategies. Implementing these strategies helps to activate students previous knowledge, making the content more interesting and relatable.

There are different things a teacher can do to trigger this type of motivation in students. “Some examples of

Connor, Jakobsons, Crowe, & Meadows, 2009; Klauda & Guthrie (2015) (as cited in Abdelhalim, 2017) wrote, “Research on the motivational aspects of reading has reached that there is a strong and positive correlation between reading engagement, keeping students attentive and involved for extended periods of time, and higher student achievement in reading comprehension. This passage is a clear indicator as to why the curriculum isn’t pertinent for all. In addition, Vaish (2016) and Wigfield et al. (2008) identify the term ‘engagement’ as a goal of teaching reading as a consistent with a multi-dimensional approach in that it includes behavioral, emotional/motivational, and cognitive aspects. I believe there’s no doubt that every child is capable of learning. However, through perception, design, and non-relatable materials minority students do not always measure up to the standard of the curriculum; which does increase the achievement gap.

Every fall, millions of students enroll into their first year of college. For many, they decide to live in dormitories, for others they decide to commute. As school begins there's going to be a lot of opportunities to get in involved in school events such as clubs, greek life, athletics, etc. Being involved at school is very important to an individual's success and creates character.

Student Engagement and High Impact practices are utilized on a majority of campus across the globe. These practices implement success incentives to encourage growth among students and their academic and career development. Student engagement requires individual effort and involvement which, are critical elements that impact the college experience (Pascarella & Terenzini, 2005). Implementing high-impact practices promotes the different engagement strategies that increase the overall success of the student. George Kuh has presented ten high-impact practices that have been proven to be beneficial to students and their cumulative learning. These ten practices include First-year seminars and experiences, common intellectual experiences, learning communities, writing-intensive courses, collaborative assignments and projects, undergraduate research, diversity/global learning, service learning, community-based learning, internships, and capstone courses and projects (Kuh, 2008). These practice along with engaging strategies are essential to learning outcomes for students. The practices can be applied to students lives and promote intellectual growth and engagement. Implementing engaging activities throughout a student’s college career helps prepare students to collaborate research with field experience, make meaningful connections, and increase the likelihood of learning, success, and retention. Over the last five years, I have worked