Engage the Learner!

On my list of summer reads is Marzano's The Highly Engaged Classroom. I've read his other work and have enormous respect for his research. I've read through this new one quickly but want to go through it again more slowly to truly digest what he has to say. In it he explains ways to get students more engaged in their learning. One way he suggests is incorporating physical movement. I love allowing my students to move away from their desks and try to engage students in movement when I can. One way is to use word cheers to help them with new vocabulary. In doing this I write a new word on the board or show it on a card. We do the chunky monkey and break it into word parts. For instance: if the word is "representative", we would break it into syllable chunks: rep re sent a tive. Then we would take out a word cheer from the bin. I have many different ones. For instance: basketball dunk Students would dunk each syllable into their imaginary basket as we practice reading the word. We always end with a final reading of the word fluently as it was meant to be read and swish our hands like a rollercoaster at the end. I must say students are into the cheers and everyone participates!