Early Literacy part of the Education Reform Network

Student Engagement

• Active Engagement Strategies
  This resource from the Schools of Montgomery County, PA, identifies 35 active engagement strategies. Links to each strategy provide steps and instructions.
• All Aboard: Actively Engaging All Students All of the Time
  In the Nevada Reading First Fall 2007 newsletter (Volume 5, Issue 1, pp. 3-4), Darrin Hardman and Carrie Reed discuss the theory behind best teaching practices for active learning and provide some exemplary practices.
• Children's Literature: Digitized Print Materials
  Children's Literature: Digitized Print Materials provides 50 digitized texts of rare books: The Arabian Nights, A Child's Garden of Verses, Ballad of the Lost Hare, A Christmas Carol, Humpty Dumpty, The Grasshopper Stories, Mother Goose Finger Plays, The Pied Piper of Hamelin, The Rocket Book, The Secret Garden, Stories from Hans Andersen, The Three Bears, Three Little Pigs, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and others. (Library of Congress) Features include bibliographic information and page-turner views of children’s literature.
• Contexts for Engagement and Motivation in Reading
  This resource illustrates the Engagement Model of Reading Development (Guthrie, 2000). The figure shows relationships among engagement processes of the reader, motivation and strategies, and classroom practices that may increase long-term reading motivation and engagement.
• Doing What Works
  This website is called "Doing What Works" and it is an amazing collection. There are video demonstrations, interviews, templates for planning and teaching reading, overviews of essential components for teaching different reading skills, and much more.
• Helping Your Child Become a Reader
  Helping Your Child Become a Reader offers dozens of activities families may use to help young children learn the alphabet, play with rhymes, "read" picture books, act out poems, predict what happens next in stories, create a bookcase, enjoy family stories, write notes and stories, and more. (Department of Education) This pdf document contains a parent checklist to help babies from 6 weeks to children 6 years old become better readers.
• How Teachers Learn to Engage Students in Active Listening
  This article describes the importance, goals, examples, teacher design, implications, and recommendations for engaging students in active listening.
• Improving our K-6 Reading Adoptions: From Adoption to Expert Implementation
  • Description: This 27-page handout from Anita Archer addresses engaging students in the "Big 5 plus Writing" components (Phonemic Awareness, Decoding/Phonics, Vocabulary, Fluency and Comprehension)of Reading First. For specific ideas on engagement strategies, see the section starting on page 4: Active Participation: Tools for Your Engagement Tool Kit.
• Increasing Student Engagement and Checking for Understanding During Instructional Lessons:
  The more time students spend truly engaged in the learning, the more students learn. Teachers also need to continually check for student understand as instructional lessons progress from one concept or skill to the next.
• Increasing Student Engagement and Motivation: From Time-on-Task to Homework
  This document includes a brief research summary of motivation/engagement,m the importance of motivating students to engage in class activities, and homework considerations. The article concludes with the statement "Educators can and do affect students' level of engagement in learning.".
• Reading Planet
  Reading Planet is designed to help families and children explore the world of books. It features an annotated list of 1,000 children's books that can be browsed by age group, author, or category (e.g., popular, classic, award winning).
• Resource Guide: Reading Strategies for Content Areas
  The TOBI (The Open Book Initiative) Resource Guide is a collection of all the strategies that have been presented to TOBI teachers during the 03-04 school year. Instructional strategies address learner needs across the curriculum for those students who are intensive, strategic, benchmark and advanced learners.
• School Completion and Student Engagement: Information and Strategies for Parents
  This article includes a definition of student engagement along four facets (academic, cognitive, behavioral, and psychological); the critical role of parents in promoting student engagement; and guidelines for promoting student engagement.
• Strategies for Increasing Student Engagement
  This article summarizes research on instructional design and classroom management.
• Student Engagement Brochure: Nevada Reading First
  This teacher-friendly brochure is tied to Nevada Reading First's 2007-2008 thematic goal: All Aboard! Actively Engaging All Students All of the Time. The fifteen strategies are categorized by written responses, partner responses, whole group and team responses, and action responses; steps and sample teacher talk in the classroom are included for each strategy.
• Using Engagement Strategies to Facilitate Children’s Learning and Success
  In this article, Judy Jablon and Michael Wilkinson define what engagement is and why it is important to children’s success as learners. They offer strategies for facilitating children’s engagement in learning and provide some tips for implementing them.
• Using Student Engagement to Improve Adolescent Literacy
  This booklet, in downloadable form, has applications for K-3 as well as adolescent learners. Included are key elements of student engagement; a figure of key elements and how they relate to student achievement; and options (instruction, assessment, professional development) for schools, districts, and states.