It may sound cliche for us to say this, but students in 2018 are much different from the learners of our day. And before you start labeling us as crotchety old curmudgeons complaining about those unruly whippersnappers who have no respect and play their music too loud, we’re talking about kids we went to school with during the late ‘90s and ‘00s, not the 1950s style learner from when McPartland was a student. Even back in our day though, we were pretty darn good at the, “We just sit there and take it” style of learning. We didn’t grow up with the immediacy of cell phones like the learners of 2018 have. We had to wait for people to return our phone calls instead of texting us back right away. We wrote physical letters to each other on paper and had to wait for the mailman to bring a reply. And when we didn’t know something, we had to wait until we had access to an encyclopedia, or at least until our class’s day in the computer lab, to find out an answer. So when teachers gave lectures to share information with us, we were okay with it. How else were we going to find out this stuff? The students we serve today aren’t as used to waiting. They want their information, and they want it now. What’s more, they know how to access the information they want -- they’re much better “self-sufficient researchers” than we ever were (Briggs, 2014). They literally can’t wait to learn.
It seems then, that what worked all the time back then may not work now. Let’s not even discuss McPartland’s 1950s style of learning. Those guys walked uphill both ways. So, today’s blog is all about how to make your lecture more engaging.
First of all, we want to be clear in saying that lectures are not inherently bad. We all have pieces of our curriculum where we know we have to do a certain amount of explaining, telling, instructing directly, imparting knowledge -- whatever you want to call it. However, we also know that just because we are standing at the front of the room telling students everything we know about a given topic, that doesn’t mean that they are actually learning it. So what can we do? How do we match this type of instruction where we know students need to absorb what we are telling them with the sense of immediacy kids are used to in the rest of their lives? One possible answer is to give them chances to interact with this information sooner and more often. Instead of waiting until the end of a lecture to check for understanding, building in more frequent opportunities for students to process the information they’re hearing by summarizing it, discussing it with a neighbor, asking questions about it, representing it visually, etc. increases engagement and the likelihood that they’ll remember that information later on.
Here are some strategies you might consider:
Chunking your Lectures: The claim that the average attention span for students is 10-15 minutes is up for debate. However, researchers have found some validity in the idea that students’ attention exhibits a “waxing and waning pattern” during instructor lectures (Bunce, Flence, & Neiles, 2010). In their study, they observed “attention lapses occurring more frequently as the lecture progressed” and that “by the end of the lecture, lapses occurred about every two minutes” (Bunce, Flence, & Neiles, 2010). The implications for us as teachers are to 1.) frontload our lectures at the beginning of class and 2.) “chunk” our lectures into segments interspersed with a variety of student activities. Tech. tools like Pear Deck or Nearpod can help build lessons like this (see our super cool video below), but simple actions like a Turn and Talk, quick write, or conducting a quick poll to check for understanding every few minutes can be just as effective.
It seems then, that what worked all the time back then may not work now. Let’s not even discuss McPartland’s 1950s style of learning. Those guys walked uphill both ways. So, today’s blog is all about how to make your lecture more engaging.
First of all, we want to be clear in saying that lectures are not inherently bad. We all have pieces of our curriculum where we know we have to do a certain amount of explaining, telling, instructing directly, imparting knowledge -- whatever you want to call it. However, we also know that just because we are standing at the front of the room telling students everything we know about a given topic, that doesn’t mean that they are actually learning it. So what can we do? How do we match this type of instruction where we know students need to absorb what we are telling them with the sense of immediacy kids are used to in the rest of their lives? One possible answer is to give them chances to interact with this information sooner and more often. Instead of waiting until the end of a lecture to check for understanding, building in more frequent opportunities for students to process the information they’re hearing by summarizing it, discussing it with a neighbor, asking questions about it, representing it visually, etc. increases engagement and the likelihood that they’ll remember that information later on.
Here are some strategies you might consider:
Chunking your Lectures: The claim that the average attention span for students is 10-15 minutes is up for debate. However, researchers have found some validity in the idea that students’ attention exhibits a “waxing and waning pattern” during instructor lectures (Bunce, Flence, & Neiles, 2010). In their study, they observed “attention lapses occurring more frequently as the lecture progressed” and that “by the end of the lecture, lapses occurred about every two minutes” (Bunce, Flence, & Neiles, 2010). The implications for us as teachers are to 1.) frontload our lectures at the beginning of class and 2.) “chunk” our lectures into segments interspersed with a variety of student activities. Tech. tools like Pear Deck or Nearpod can help build lessons like this (see our super cool video below), but simple actions like a Turn and Talk, quick write, or conducting a quick poll to check for understanding every few minutes can be just as effective.
Note-taking: In her popular Cult of Pedagogy blog, Jennifer Gonzalez writes, “Whether it’s taking notes from lectures (Kiewra, 2002) or from reading (Rahmani & Sadeghi, 2011; Chang & Ku, 2014), note-taking has been shown to improve student learning. In other words, if we want our students to remember more of what they learn in our classes, it’s better to have them take notes than it is to not have them take notes.” Note-taking not only helps students retain what they are learning and become actively engaged in a lecture, it is an important study skill for them to learn if they plan to pursue post-secondary education. We need to remember, though, that not all students actually know how to take good notes and that when given a choice between whether to take notes or not, many will opt out. Gonzalez suggests explicitly teaching note-taking strategies like Cornell notes and building in time for students to revise, add to, or rewrite their notes. Collaborative note-taking is another good strategy to try; see how one teacher gives students different roles to fill as they complete a set of notes as a class over one of his lectures.
Engagement Wheel: Dave Sladkey writes a blog where he refers to a tool he calls the engagement wheel quite. His message: Be intentional about planning for student engagement. The engagement wheel is a way to reflect on an hour of your day that you have taught and try to give it an engagement score. The higher the score, the more engaged your class was. The engagement wheel measures what your students are doing.
How to use the engagement wheel
- Choose a class period that you have recently completed. It could be just a one hour segment of your day to reflect on.
- Count the total number of spokes (pie pieces) that are true for that class period to determine your student’s engagement level.
- Do this over a number of days and determine an average engagement level for your class.
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Using the engagement wheel can tell you what you do repeatedly when planning lessons or not at all. You can also have your students give you feedback on the engagement wheel to see where they stand with their engagement.
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Whether it’s seeking a clear picture of whether students are engaged during lectures in the first place or incorporating strategies to increase that level of engagement when you present information, we hope you’ve found a couple of new tools to add to your box. Or, you could go back to talking about how things were “when I was your age” and yelling at kids to get off your lawn.
This Cool Thing We Found
Pear Deck is a neat add-on in Google Slides for adding engagement and interest to the slideshows that you might use when you lecture. It lets you insert short answer and multiple choice questions along with opportunities for students to draw on the screen or drag and drop symbols to spots on the slide. Check out our informative video about Pear Deck!
Teacher Feature
This month we are featuring English teacher Cassie Alber. She sat down for a Q & A about how she works to engage students.
Tell us about something that you’ve done that you believe has been impactful in the classroom for students?
This year when I introduced Shakespeare to the students I decided I wanted to make it more engaging and make them want to read Julius Caesar. So last week I "killed" all my students. Using the last lines of characters before their deaths, I handed each student a quote. They then had to interpret Shakespeare's words and decide how they would say the line and act out how the character dies. Some students had a lot of fun with it jumping off chairs, falling on "swords", "hanging" themselves, etc. At the end of the period all of the students were laying on the floor dead.
With my juniors in AP Lit, we had a snowball fight! They have a lot of literary terms they have to learn in order to prepare for the AP exam. As we looked at poetry, the terms were daunting. So to help them learn them, I provided a Quizlet, Quizizz, and Kahoot, but I wanted it to be fun too. One day I gave them half sheets of paper with the exit ticket printed on one side, but had them flip it to the blank side and pick one of the terms and write only the definition. Then I had them crumple up the paper, played music and had them throw paper around the room for a bit. When the music stopped, they had to grab the nearest snowball. Then we went around the room and read the definitions and tried to figure out which term matched the definitions. They struggled. So then we played 25000 pyramid so that they could internalize the definitions more with word association. It has made a huge impact on their learning.
How did you see their learning grow from the lesson?
I think that they were able to make connections and understand that vocabulary is something they will encounter their whole lives. This gave them a different method for learning the words that made it more tactile and verbal than just memorizing flashcards.
What would you tell yourself (if you could) about being a first-year teacher?
While being a first year teacher can be exhausting and challenging, it is rewarding too. You get to discover who you are as a teacher, you are able to make mistakes and no one will really blame you, and you get to do it all over again next year and it will get better!
While being a first year teacher can be exhausting and challenging, it is rewarding too. You get to discover who you are as a teacher, you are able to make mistakes and no one will really blame you, and you get to do it all over again next year and it will get better!
