Adding ENGAGEMENT to your classroom!

Engagement--this is a big word in education today--huh? This is a word that I have seen throughout the blog world and has been a key word in my school year this year.

Merriam Webster defines engagement as:

I believe engagement can be defined in many ways, just like it is above.

Here is my educational definition of engagement:
Students being INVOLVED in the lesson. (basically them not giving you the "bored" look :) )

I know this might have been the type of learning that we grew up with, but this is the type of learning that our students NEED today.

Many bloggers have inspired many of my ideas and I want to make sure to give them credit. I do believe that we are all in this together and all learn from each other!

• Elementary Shenanigans (Hope King)
• Miss 5th (Brittney Briggs)
• Kim Bearden 

I know there are more of you out there--please know that the blogger world and the instagram world has inspired me and made me become a better teacher! Thank you to everyone!

My word for 2016 is gamification! If you do not know what this word means, it is adding games to your classroom. I have found that any time, I can make it into a game even if it is a worksheet that my students LOVE working. It is truly incredible.

Here are some examples of some of my engagement strategies this year:

I have made many board games GIANT! So far, I have made a GIANT Candy Land, Clue, Connect Four, and Hungry Hungry Hippos.

These were VERY simple to set up. For Connect Four, I just displayed the board I googled with my projector and cut out red and yellow circles with magnets on the board. The Clue board game spaces are here. I just made spaces in between and questions for the team to answer. The Candy Land was just colored pieces of paper that were all lined up with colored question cards applicable to whatever topic I was discussing at the time. Hungry Hungry Hippos came from Elementary Shenanigans and my kiddos were in love! Go out and buy plastic colored balls as well as laundry baskets and borrow some scooters!

The goal of my room everyone is to not just have worksheets, but to have that up and moving and engaged.

More to come on engagement in future blog posts! Stay tuned!