Teacher Hack Expert Blog

The go-to tasks that we as teachers have in our tool box are typically worksheets.  It’s understandable.  They are usually the resource that our textbooks reference, the next thing for our student to do.   They are low prep - in most cases we just need to make copies and distribute them to our students.   Did you know you can take these worksheets and use them to amp up the student engagement in class?  Here’s how I learned just how to make this a reality within my own classroom.  I attended a professional development that was being offered by my school district to meet the required hours needed before the start of the upcoming school year.  To my surprise, this PD experience was one of the most enjoyable learning opportunities I had in the 15 years I’d been in education.   One of the sessions that was most interesting was about game-ifying math worksheets.  It was so fun!  The teacher presenter referenced the book Boredom...

A recent buzz phrase in education is student engagement.  And of course there are many different ways we as teachers can engage our students.  Before we discuss how, let’s first define engagement.   What is engagement?  In the article How teachers can supercharge student engagement in the classroom ,  John Hattie states “too often, engagement is seen in terms of ‘doing’ - are the students doing the work? Are they completing it? Schools are busy places with lots of activities, assignments, and assessments - doing, doing, doing.  But in a lot of ‘doing’ there can be little learning.”  So then, how do we increase student engagement? He goes on to say, “instead, we need to think of engagement as being turned onto the challenge of learning.  Like when playing video games, being clear about what success means, providing feedback to move students from where they are to where they need to be, rewarding the attainment of success with even challenging ...