Promoting Active Engagement in Middle School

When students actively engage with content during each lesson through thinking, writing, and discussing, they develop their own ideas, questions, and insights. Active engagement allows them to grow as independent thinkers rather than passively waiting for their teacher or classmates to do the thinking for them.

Creating classroom routines and developing a classroom culture that requires every student to take ownership of their learning is key to ensuring that all students are engaged in learning and meaningful participation.

As an administrator, the most common suggestion I provide teachers is to incorporate strategies that hold all students accountable for their learning. It’s easy to fall into the trap of asking thought-provoking questions and then having only a handful of students respond verbally while others sit silently.

When all students are involved and responsible for engaging with content, however, it transforms the student experience into one where everyone is learning, thinking, and growing. This shift from passive to active learning is vital for building students’ confidence, critical thinking skills, and academic skills.

Encouraging Engagement in Middle School

Consider these strategies for helping to ensure that all students are fully involved in their learning.

Goal setting and reflection: Set individual learning objectives and reflection. This can be formal or informal, depending on the needs of your students. Have them write down their own learning goals at the start of a new unit and/or as they begin learning new skills.

As students move through the content, give them time to reflect on their learning and to consider where they are in reaching their goals. This will help build a classroom culture that values growth and individual accountability for learning.

Writing to learn: When students write about content, they’re thinking about content. Writing to learn provides natural differentiation and holds all students accountable for interacting with the content. This encourages students to process their ideas and can also serve as a formative and/or self-assessment.

Sum it up: Provide a few minutes at the end of class or at the end of teaching a concept for all students to write what they’ve learned in their own words using bullet points or brief phrases.

Writing break: At any point in the lesson when it would benefit students to process ideas, pause and provide a one-to-three-minute break for them to respond to a question or explain a concept in writing.

Fill in the blanks: Provide sentence starters or fill-in-the-blank sentences for students to quickly write their ideas. Here are some question-starter ideas.

1. Now that you know ______, what conclusion can you draw about ______?

2. How does ______ connect to ______?

3. What do you think happened before ______?

4. What do you think happened after ______?

5. How are ______, ______, and ______ connected?

Question everything: Students write down as many questions as they can about a topic, skill, or concept. Brainstorming questions is one way to get them to consider what they know, what they’re confused about, and what interests them.

Online responses: Interactive polls, quizzes, discussions, and games can allow you to quickly collect individual information about students while holding all students accountable for learning. Programs such as Quizlet, Kahoot, Socrative, and Google Questions and Forms in Google Classroom are a few that I use with students.

Discussion strategies: As students engage in whole class or large group discussions, it’s important to create protocols and strategies that engage all students, not just the ones who are speaking up, and to encourage everyone to participate.

One-word start: Start a whole class discussion with a question that can be answered in one word, and then require each student to share their one-word answer. This helps create an environment where everyone feels comfortable sharing their ideas and understands that everyone’s thoughts and ideas are valued.

Three-part discussion notes: While students are engaging in a whole class discussion, everyone who is not speaking takes notes on what they want to say, questions they have, and what they learned. This lets students think through what they want to contribute and refer back to, and it holds everyone accountable for engaging in the ideas of the discussion.

Make a plan: Before discussions, provide students with some of the questions and themes that will be addressed so that they can jot down their ideas before the discussion begins. Taking a few minutes to do this will encourage more students to participate because they have an opportunity to gather their thoughts, and it holds everyone accountable for thinking about the ideas even if they don’t share them.

Response cards: Provide response cards to students to hold up to share their ideas. These could be a simple yes or no, or red, green, and yellow to show how much they agree with a statement, or any other quick response that connects to the content.

Dedicated think time: Set a specific amount of time for students to think about an answer, and then ask all of them to raise their hand once they have arrived at their idea, with the goal being that everyone’s hand is up before the timer goes off and the teacher can call on anyone to share.

Engaging every student in meaningful learning is essential for fostering a classroom culture of growth, accountability, and collaboration. By implementing strategies that encourage active participation, such as reflection, goal setting, writing, and discussion protocols, teachers can ensure that all students are thinking about the content. These practices also help students build confidence and take ownership of their learning.