Engaged Teaching: "Do Now" Activities for Your Lessons

Engaged Teaching:  "Do Now" Activities for Your Lessons

Photo Credit:  Veer

Edutopia blogger Maurice Ellis, a professor of psychology at Rutgers University, follows up on an earlier blog in which he reviewed the book titled The Five Dimensions of Engaged Teaching by Laura Weaver and Mark Wilding.  Ellis summarizes some useful techniques that teachers can use right away in their effort to deliver the Common Core.

For younger grades, the author suggests beginning each day with a "golden moment of silence" to quiet the mind and body.  This almost zen approach calms younger students (older, too?) before engaging them in the tasks of learning.  Another technique, mentioned here by Ellis but also appropriate for middle and high school students, is a "shared agreements" policy, in which students collaborate on things like classroom rules, culture of behavior, and acceptable standards.  The buy-in created from such a policy would strengthen cohesiveness in a classroom of any age student.

In the middle grades, the authors recommend a "transitions circle," in which students would engage in discussion about the difficulties of transitioning to middle school.  This format gives each student a voice in a non-threatening environment, and promotes healthy discussion of the challenges shared by all of the students as they grow older.  Another idea from Weaver and Wilding's book is "personalizing global issues."  Students could take issues like global warming and connect to their own world, establishing the relevancy and delivering on a call to action to improve things.  

Finally, for high school students, the authors provide ideas for book-ending the class period with an inspirational quote or passage at the beginning and a "pair-share" or "dyad" at the end.  The opening quote might set the tone for the lesson plan and help students connect to the subject being taught.  Especially in literature, thematic inspiration is only a keystroke away.  The "pair-share" or "dyad" allows students to write down 2 things they learned that day, or ask 2 questions about  which they would like to know more.  It's a formative type of assessment that checks for understanding while holding the student accountable for that day's material.  

School should be a safe place for the exchange of ideas in a cooperative environment.  This blog post, and the book by Weaver and Wilding gives a number of ideas that can help teachers to create such an environment and to foster healthy collaboration in a non-threatening way.