How Does Teach for Success Ensure Student Engagement?

Teach for Success emphasizes that student engagement – the continuous, active involvement of students in the academic learning – is the teacher’s responsibility. The Teach for Success team shows teachers how to create dynamic classrooms that dramatically increase student engagement by providing high levels of accountability and structure. Such classrooms require advance planning of lessons that structure classroom activities for maximum engagement, and that use proven engagement techniques such as identifying similarities and differences, summarizing, note taking, using nonlinguistic representations, and developing advance organizers.

In Teach for Success classrooms, student participation is a requirement, not an invitation.

Teach for Success also provides ongoing, specific feedback to teachers to improve their ability to plan, deliver, and assess effective, rigorous standards-based instruction. The Teach for Success Classroom Observation Protocol (see sample below) provides a common ground for establishing the components of student engagement.

Section Two:
 Ensure Student Engagement Throughout the Learning

The Teacher Demonstrates All of the Following Attributes:

  • Directs student(s) to be engaged in the academic learning
  • Directs all of the students to participate in the academic learning at the same time*
  • Makes student engagement mandatory by ensuring that all of the students are engaged throughout the academic learning *

* When using the T4S program as an observational tool, the observers are looking for 85 percent or more of the students to be engaged at the same time and throughout the academic learning.

The Teacher Directs Students to Be Involved by Engaging Them in the Following Activities:

  • Responding orally through conversing, summarizing, sharing similarities and differences, or responding chorally as a whole group
  • Producing something on paper or a white board through note taking, completing an advance organizer, completing or drawing a nonlinguistic representation, writing a summary, or explaining in writing the similarities or differences of a topic
  • Signaling through a common gesture or displaying the white board or response card
  • Demonstrating a response through movement
  • Mentally processing information and sharing that processing through a choral or written response or conversing with another student

What does a Teach for Success Classroom Look Like?

The following transcript from a Teach for Success Classroom illustrates that teachers, through careful advance planning and the use of appropriate techniques, can improve student engagement. The Teach for Success team uses such concrete transcripts to show teachers how to engage students. The words in bold are examples of the teacher directing all students to respond at the same time.

Student Engagement Classroom Transcript

The teacher says, “We are continuing our study of animals. Last week we studied reptiles. This week we are studying mammals. Everyone think of the characteristics of mammals we discussed yesterday.” There is silence in the classroom as the teacher waits for five seconds.

He then continues by saying, “In your science journal, create a graphic organizer that displays as many characteristics of a mammal as you can remember.” Again the teacher pauses and monitors the students’ participation.

After about a minute the teacher says, “Share with your partner the characteristics you wrote on your paper. Partner A share two characteristics, and partner B tell two more characteristics.” As the students are sharing, the teacher circulates, listening to the students and looking at the responses on each student’s graphic organizer.

After about a minute of discussion, the teacher says, “Class, let me share with you the characteristics I heard you discussing. I want everyone to listen to see if you have these characteristics on your graphic organizer. If you do, put a check by that characteristic, and if you do not, add it to your graphic organizer.”

The teacher then states, “On the back of your paper, draw a Venn diagram. In one circle write reptiles and in the other write mammals. With your partner, discuss and write the similarities and differences between these two types of animals we have been studying.”

As students are completing the task, the teacher again walks around and monitors students’ participation and responses.