While completing walkthroughs of classrooms, district administrators noticed quality work when it came to student engagement and ownership in many classrooms, including in several new teachers' classes. 

Superintendent Ron Ballard said it's great to see the skill that even the newest teachers are bringing into their work. 

Chief Academic Officer Suzanne Farmer said a common theme she noticed is that teachers who are joyful about their teaching and content areas can spread that excitement to their students. 

"That's one of the things that we're looking for in the culture of learning is this joyful learning, the joy that the students and their teacher demonstrate ... and it's through positive relationships, but it's also just this excitement that is contagious," she said. 

Eight teachers shared how they focus on student engagement and ownership. 

Diana Oliver

Mary G. Hogsett Primary School First Grade Teacher Diana Oliver starts class with the class mission statement, "I can" statements and learning targets "to remind students they are in charge of their learning," she said. 

"Students take ownership when they can talk to someone or the class about their thoughts," Oliver said. "I encourage people to share their different perspectives or strategies to solve problems."

A class goal is reading all kindergarten and first grade sight words by the end of the year. As they are assessed monthly, students move their names to show how they've progressed. 

"They love to see their progress," Oliver said. 

During whole group writing time and small reading groups, the class has been using Thinking Maps.

"Lessons in both settings are helping students have better writing that includes more details, better and more complete sentences and shows their comprehension more than in previous years," Oliver said.

Students are starting first grade with good foundational skills "since they had a full, well-taught kindergarten year" of Write from the Beginning ... and Beyond, she said.

"Students show more understanding and confidence in their writing and answering questions,” Oliver said. 

She incorporates positive reinforcement in the form of points, praise, Blue Slips, and positive comments. She uses sticks that have student names on them that she pulls throughout the day to prompt students "to answer or perform a task in front of the group." 

 

 

 

Angel Davis

One of Edna L. Toliver Intermediate School 5th Grade Teacher Angel Davis' recent math lessons revolved around calculating volume.

She made bags of cubes for each student to build rectangular prisms. Students were already comfortable using cubes to calculate volume, but Davis presented a challenge to them: What if they didn't have enough blocks? What if they didn't have access to blocks at all? How would they calculate volume then? 

This gave students a natural way to transition into using a math formula to calculate volume.

"I didn't want students to simply memorize another formula," Davis said. "I wanted them to understand why it works based on what they had already seen and built. Students worked together, compared strategies, and explained how they knew their answers made sense. When they didn't have enough cubes to complete a prism on their own, they had to collaborate."

In her classroom, Davis enjoys using hands-on activities, partner work, turn-and-talks, problem solving, and class discussions. Manipulatives are one of her favorite math tools because students can see a concept in action before learning a formula or procedure. 

"I also ask students to explain how they got an answer instead of focusing only on whether it is correct," she said. "I want them to feel comfortable sharing different strategies and learning from each other. I also want them to know that mistakes are part of learning. Sometimes a wrong answer leads to one of our best discussions.”

Davis enjoys watching students catch and correct their own mistakes, help classmates, confidently explain their strategies or proudly proclaim what they accomplished. 

"I love seeing that moment when a new strategy finally 'clicks,'" she said. "Often, the student who needed help yesterday is the one explaining it to a classmate today."

Alyce Myers

Recently, Toliver 4th Grade Teacher Alyce Myers taught about structures of poetry, including rhythm, rhyming and repetition, through song. 

"The students responded really well with this approach and loved singing with me," she said. 

Myers uses Kagan cooperative learning techniques to encourage student engagement, like sharing thoughts with peers in a smaller environment first, giving them more confidence to share with the whole class. 

One way Myers encourages student ownership is through a classroom contract.

"My students and I read 'Our Class is a Family' by Shannon Olsen," she said. "We then used the topic of our class being a family as a contract for how we want our family to look like for the rest of the year." 

Some things students promised to do were be kind, honest and enthusiastic, keep their heads up and have fun. Myers reminds her students about these promises daily. 

"I also love to give them a confidence boost before they work on something," she said. "I do this by reminding them that they are capable of doing great things."

 

 

Brittany Terrell

One assignment John W. Bate Middle School 7th Grade Math Teacher Brittany Terrell gave her students was to choose which graph didn't belong out of four graphs. They wrote about their choice and provided justification. 

This assignment served several purposes. One was to develop "Empowered Learner" and “Effective Communicator” Portrait of a Danville Learner competencies, since they had to justify and share their answers. 

"A final purpose was to get them talking about math without being afraid of making mistakes," Terrell said. "In this task, there was no 'correct' answer." 

This exercise was useful in creating a "safe" learning environment and to prepare for a test, she said. 

"Because many students lack confidence in math, it is helpful to create an environment where sharing ideas and making mistakes is normal," she said. "... It ended up being helpful because there were many concepts on our study guide ... that students had misconceptions about, and they were not afraid to try and answer and be wrong, which gave me opportunities to see where they were confused and to reteach a few things." 

Some of Terrell's favorite moments are when students work together to solve a problem and explain their thinking.

"I also really enjoy helping students make connections between the math we are learning and their real lives," she said. "I think students are more motivated to learn when they can see how the content is useful beyond the classroom.”

Terrell considers student ownership an area where she wants to grow, but one way she's working toward it is "by allowing more room for productive struggle." 

"Rather than immediately giving students an answer when they are stuck, I am trying to respond with questions that help them think about what they already know and what they might try next," she said.

 

 

 

Keva Buckley

This is Bate 8th Grade English/Language Arts (ELA) Teacher Keva Buckley's second year implementing Write from the Beginning ... and Beyond strategies, which align with Thinking Maps.

The Bate ELA department decided last year to incorporate an Article of the Week resource from Kelly Gallagher, who does work in literacy education. They use it alongside the Write from the Beginning ... and Beyond tools, one of which is a Tree Map that classifies signal words that indicate structure of a text. Buckley said students have been learning how to use structure to determine an author's purpose. 

"Offering options and different approaches is important to me as a teacher and a leader in our classroom," she said. "Our Bulldogs each come into our classroom with varied backgrounds, strengths, skills and preferences. I strive to meet them where they are, including with engagement. A few of my favorite ways to do this so far this year have been classroom jobs ... we have as many as 20 roles." 

Buckley uses a lot of "Think, Pair, Shares" and "Turn and Talk" strategies for engagement.

"We also have low-pressure book talks after choice reading time where students excitedly share about what they're reading," she said. 

She's a fan of "I Do, We Do, You Do," with modeling of a task and moving on to students doing the task on their own. 

"I am also a fan of offering opportunities for creativity," she said. "We have so many wildly talented Bulldogs who really knock it out of the park with creative projects. I have already seen some beautiful productive struggle this school year and cannot wait to see how these students continue to flourish as they ask questions, ask for new opportunities and more.”

 Anais Cashel

Bate 6th Grade ELA Teacher Anais Cashel has been teaching students that setting is not just place, but time. She's taught students that the time period of a written piece can put it into context. 

"I believe in critical thinking skills for all ages and abilities," she said. "I also believe that history/social studies goes hand in hand with ELA and literary analysis. By understanding the historical and cultural context of the story 'The First Day of School,' set in 1958 after Brown v. Board of Education, my students are able to make connections to the characters in that setting and understand their own role and lived experiences as students in the 2020s. My students have participated in group activities such as constructing Double Bubble Maps and open-ended text discussions."

Like Myers, Cashel uses a lot of Kagan strategies in her classroom, like "Turn and Talks," "Think Pair Shares," and "Ultimate Rock Paper Scissors" for review sessions. 

"I think engagement and accountability go hand in hand because I have seen that the more students are engaged and interacting with the lesson, the fewer undesirable behaviors we have," Cashel said. "Students hold themselves and others accountable by actively participating. I also encourage paper and pencil in my classroom and hardly ever use the Chromebooks. Call me old-school."

 

 

 

Ethan Willoughby

In Danville High School Science Teacher Ethan Willoughby's physical science class, students recently completed an energy transfer model lesson. They drew models to represent how thought a battery would fit into what they already knew about electric grids. When they completed their models, they swapped papers with one another and gave each other feedback. 

This was a lesson in being a Productive Collaborator, one of the Danville Portrait competencies. 

One of Willoughby's favorite ways to promote engagement is getting students to talk. They have "Turn and Talks" each day. Willoughby said it's important for students to learn how to vocalize their opinions, and that it's important to give them plenty of positive feedback. 

"My position as a football coach has been very meaningful and an effective addition to my toolset as a first-year teacher," Willoughby said. "I believe in both the classroom and the field, my job is to guide and support my students on their way to success.”

One way he encourages student ownership is through laboratory work days, which he said his students love. For example, students have been investigating blackouts in Texas that happened in 2021 and working to understand what caused them, as well as how local electric grids could be improved to prevent similar issues.

He said students often call out, "Mr.Willoughby, look what I found," or “Hey Mr. Willoughby, come look what we noticed." 

"It encourages me to keep motivating them to explore and deepen their knowledge and excitement for science, and it encourages the students that they are capable of learning and understanding science, a field they may have seen as too complex or hard before," Willoughby said. "All of my students are incredible. They’re making my first year teaching a pleasure. Their willingness to learn is definitely motivating me to become a better teacher for them every day."

Sofie Farmer

DHS Math Teacher Sofie Farmer uses pod group seating in her classroom, and every desk is labeled with a playing card. Cards of the same rank are seated together. Students are randomly assigned seats every other Monday. Farmer uses this strategy to facilitate group work. The playing cards help her assign roles to students, and switching things up ensures that students are able to take on a number of roles and discuss things with different students. 

"I use a lot of the strategies from Peter Liljedahl's Building Thinking Classrooms to help increase student engagement and collaboration within my classroom … A favorite strategy of mine is the use of vertical non-permanent surfaces, really large wall whiteboards,” she said. “Students will frequently do group work at their large whiteboards on the walls. The whiteboards are instrumental for encouraging students to get ideas down as they can always be erased, and the fact that the whiteboards are on the wall make it more difficult for students to disengage."

In addition to "Turn and Talks," Farmer integrates tools like math journals into her classroom. 

"I have seen really amazing engagement and divergent thinking through the use of the math journals," she said. 

On Mondays, she highlights new and interesting ways to think about prompts, where students see pictures of their peers' learning.  

"This has been super powerful for communicating that mathematics is done in so many different ways and that everyone is a mathematician," Farmer said. 

Farmer said students' reactions to seeing their work shared with the class are often excitement and surprise. 

A huge focus of the math department is productive struggle, Farmer said. 

"I have tried to implement this as much as possible so students are the agents of their learning," she said. "They often feel a sense of payoff or higher reward when they get it, and they are more willing to engage with difficult tasks because they know they are capable."