This week I am co-presenting a professional development session on increasing student engagement. We are modeling strategies to use both face to face and in a Zoom platform. The strategies are designed to increase student thinking and discourse, decrease teacher talk, and provide a variety of ways for students to respond. We choose to model our engagement strategies through Interactive Read Aloud (IRA), because IRA is one of the strongest equity moves in reading instruction as it models the work of a proficient reader, exposes students to diverse texts, provides opportunities for rich accountable talk, and texts are above what students can read independently thus giving a glimpse of what lies ahead for readers. In this blog I want to share some of the strategies we plan to share.

“Student engagement is the product of motivation and active learning.
It is a product rather than a sum because it will
not occur if either element is missing.”
– Elizabeth Barkley

Strategy 1: Our text choice was intentional. We wanted students to have a widow into another culture or a mirror reflecting back their own culture. Because our text has a strong character who experiences adversity, students can connect which provides a sliding glass door.

Strategy 2. We will play music as participants enter our Zoom meeting. The music is from the country where the text takes place. This culturally responsive strategy is intended to Ignite/Spark participant interest, which is recommended by Zaretta Hammond in Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain.

Strategy 3. Participants will use hand motions to show they have made a connection to the main character. This is a quick way to engage students, assess their understanding and engagement, and is particularly useful over Zoom because the teacher can take a quick gauge of the room. Our hand motion came from Academic Conversations.

Strategy 4. Midway through the book, we will ask participants to use their whole body/face to show how the character is feeling emotionally and physically. We will do this a few pages later, as the character experiences a huge change. We thought this would be fitting towards the middle of the IRA, to energize listeners.

Strategy 5. Participants will turn and talk to a partner, describing the main character with evidence. If we were using this in a classroom, students would have long term reading partnerships. For our purposes in a professional learning situation, we will randomly assign partners to a Zoom breakout room and will give them only 60 seconds, as we want to model that turning and talking should be brief and not interrupt the pace of the lesson by lingering too long. In a face to face situation, students could physically turn and talk. And for students new to Zoom, they could turn and talk to a family member or a stuffed animal.

Strategy 6. Towards the end of the book, participants will stop and jot about all they know about the character so far. In Zoom, this could happen via Chat or in a Padlet. In both face to face and Zoom, participants could use a pen and paper. We are choosing to use a PearDeck, to introduce a new tool to participants.

I look forward to sharing these new strategies for teachers and then having an opportunity to hear about how the strategies work in their classrooms. I am excited to coach around Interactive Read Aloud and Engagement. These are more critical now than ever.

That is the power of a diverse book:
You change everything for one kid,
and you create empathy in 100 more.
– Kelsey S

Resources:
Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors
Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain
Academic Conversations
14 Readers Tell Us Why Diverse Books Are So Important