Engagement

Age Range: Any

Overview: Ask the group to decide what they would rather do given two possible options. Take a poll, and then lead a short debate between the merits and disadvantages of each option. The questions can range from silly, to gross, to impossibly cool. This icebreaker can also be adapted to fit a theme, such as a holiday or study unit. Would You Rather is a dynamic activity that makes people think on their feet and gives insight into their priorities.

Time: 10-15 minutes

Age Range: 10-17

Overview: The VIA Survey of Character Strengths is a simple self-assessment that takes less than 15 minutes and provides a wealth of information to help pupils understand their core characteristics. Most personality tests focus on negative and neutral traits, but the VIA Survey focuses on your best qualities. https://www.viacharacter.org/

Time: 10-15 minutes

Age Range: Any

Overview: Allocate different roles and responsibilities to pupils in order to promote relatedness and autonomy in the classroom. Responsibilities can be tailored to the abilities and characteristics of individuals.

Time: N/A

Age: 5-12

Overview: This is a great game for those 15 minutes left at the end of the school days. One child starts by saying 'I went to the shops today and bought...' something beginning with A (e.g. apple). The next person continues by saying the previous item (apple) and then something beginning with B (e.g. banana). Continue around the class, working through the alphabet, adding one more item to the end of the list each time. It is great for memory and keeps all the children interested!

Time: 10 minutes

Age Range: Any

Overview: A Chunking activity involves breaking down a difficult text into more manageable pieces and having students rewrite these “chunks” in their own words. You can use this strategy with challenging texts of any length. Chunking helps students identify key words and ideas, develops their ability to paraphrase, and makes it easier for them to organize and synthesize information.

Time: N/A

Age Range: 7+

Overview: Think-pair-share (TPS) is a collaborative learning strategy where students work together to solve a problem or answer a question about an assigned reading. This strategy requires students to (1) think individually about a topic or answer to a question; and (2) share ideas with classmates. Discussing with a partner maximizes participation, focuses attention and engages students in comprehending the reading material.

Time: N/A

Age Range: Any

Overview: Modelling is an instructional strategy in which the teacher demonstrates a new concept or approach to learning and students learn by observing.

Time: N/A

Age Range: Any

Overview: The physical environment of the classroom is talking about the way a classroom is set up. Some of the key elements are accessibility, visibility, and distractibility.

Time: N/A

Age Range: Any

Overview: Incorporating real world connections into a lesson plan helps students understand why what they’re learning at is useful beyond school and university. It’s an approach that works for every curriculum to increase engagement in the learning process as students gain valuable insights into real life applications of the skills they’re being taught.

Age Range: Any

Overview: Beyond their popularity, podcasts can be a great way to engage different kinds of learners, disseminate information, and get students excited about out-of-the-box assignments. Podcasts can serve a variety of purposes for creative educators, leading to more learning and subject mastery from students. Since podcasts can be recorded and downloaded ahead of time, they’re an easy way for teachers to disseminate information that augments in-classroom.

Time: N/A

Age Range: Any

Overview: Utilise board games in class to promote engagement and develop a range of cognitive skills (Reflective Thinking, Planning, Problem Solving, Decision Making & Logical Thinking). Chess, Monopoly, Mastermind, manacala etc.).

Time: N/A

Age Range: Any

Overview: Encourage students to research a project in groups or alone and create a presentation that they then must present to the class. This encourages pupils to engage in the material as they must pass on what they’ve learnt to their classmates.

Time: N/A

Age Range: Any

Overview: Incorporate timers into the lessons. Giving the students an active time limit on how long they have to complete some of the work can help motivate them.

Time: N/A

Age Range: Any

Overview: Playing motivation music in the morning or during lessons can help inspire the students. Find your own motivational music online or encourage students to bring in or make their own motivational playlists.

Time: N/A

Age Range: Any

Overview: Invite visitors to come in to speak to the students or lead them in activities. This adds a bit of excitement to the day, breaking the normal monotony of school. Inviting visitors to come share their passions with the students can also inspire and motivate them.

Time: N/A

Age Range: Any

Overview: Golden time, or free time in which the students are allowed to enjoy free time to talk to friends or play with toys etc. This acts as a great incentive for students to finish work or as a reward.

Time: 10-30 minutes

Age Range: Any

Overview: Taking the students on trips in line with what they are learning in the curriculum, acts as a great way for the students to engage with the work.

Time: Varying

Age Range: 9+

Overview: A debating club in which the students are encouraged to research and debate issues of importance to them or the curriculum encourages students to engage more with the research and the opinions and thoughts of others.

Time: Varying

Age Range: 9-19

Overview: STEM project, creating a fun learning environment to engage students actively in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Teams of students aged 9 to 19 deploy CAD/CAM software to collaborate, design, analyse, manufacture, test, and then race miniature compressed air powered cars made from F1 model block.

Time: Varying

Age Range: 16

Overview: Opportunity for students from across the country to take part in a residential gliding scholarship which will see them go from novice to solo in just 2 weeks. The experience is designed to show the individual that aviation could be a realistic career option.

Time: 2 weeks

Age Range: 11+

Overview: Providing flexible and engaging programmes and qualifications that help young people develop skills for learning, work and life.

Time: Varying

Age Range: 4-11

Overview: The good behaviour game is a behaviour management strategy that is designed to encourage prosocial behaviour and reduce disruptive behaviour. Teachers initiate GBG by dividing children into small teams that are balanced for gender and child temperament. Teams are rewarded with points for good behaviour, according to basic classroom rules which are reviewed in class. Short games are played several times per week.

Time: 10-45 minutes

Age Range: Any

Overview: Working On What Works (WOWW) is a solution-oriented classroom management intervention which involves a coach/coaches observing the whole class - children and teacher - during one lesson per week over 10 weeks. A WOWW coach does not focus on unacceptable behaviours, but instead looks for strengths and positive actions and interactions.

Time: N/A

Age Range: Any

Overview: A One Page Profile captures all the important information about a person on a single sheet of paper under three simple headings: what people appreciate about me, what’s important to me and how best to support me.

Time: 10-15 minutes

Age Range: Any

Overview: Knowing your pupils name is an easy way for the students to feel a part of the class.

Time: N/A

Age range: Any

Overview: Consider incorporating current events into the classroom. This is important as it gives children the opportunity to learn what is going on in the world around them, outside of school. You can choose fun activities to teach your children current events. For example, News Mapping is a fun activity where children are tasked to pick a news article from the front page of a newspaper and then pin where this story happened on a World Map.

Time: N/A

Age range: Any, but perhaps older children to create iMovies.

Overview: This video making app can be a useful tool to get children more engaged with certain topics. For example, giving children a project to create a video on a certain local historical event. Or alternatively iMovie can be used by teachers as a more interesting way to introduce topics of learning.

Time: N/A

Age range: Any

Overview: To some extend it can be beneficial to give students some autonomy to their learning. Pupils are more motivated when they get a say in what they are learning or how they are learning. An easy way to do this, for example, is to provide students with multiple choices of activities to choose and reflect on, following the same learning objective.

Time: N/A

Age range:

Overview: Individualised feedback can be useful for students to improve their learning, and focusing on the positives of their work through strength-based feedback can improve well-being and engagement of pupils.

Time: N/A

Age range: Any

Overview: To keep students motivated, recognise their work in class. You can do this by putting good work on display, giving weekly awards etc.

Time: N/A

Age range: Any

Overview: Catchphrase is a fun game you can play with your class and can be easily incorporated into any topic. The rules: children are to split up into teams and one member of their team has to describe a word or catchphrase to their team (but they are NOT allowed to use any words from the word or phrase). If the team correctly guesses the word or phrase, then they earn a point and they move onto the next phrase until time runs out. Subsequent rounds get faster and faster. Using fun games such as this in classroom increases engagement by increasing active participation.

Time: N/A

Age range: Any

Overview: Agree with your class what will be the classroom goals for them to work towards.

Time: N/A

Age range: Any

Overview: Always reward when a child is being curious to enable further learning.

Time: N/A

Age range: Any

Overview: Challenge your pupils to learn a new skill each week, and perhaps to present their new skill to the class at the end of the week.

Time: N/A

Age range: Any

Overview: Encourage children to learn a new word every week, this can be done simply through displaying a word of the day in class and spend some time discussing what it means.

Time: N/A

Age range: 5-11

Overview: Marbles in a jar is a reward system that can be used in class to encourage on-task behaviour. Each time students are on-task, add a marble to the marble jar. Use marbles to support the behaviours that need most work or attention. Explain to the class that once the jar is full they can have a group reward. It is important for children to understand that they are receiving reward because of their good behaviour.

Time: N/A

Age range:

Overview: Drop everything and read, or D.E.A.R, is a month-long celebration of reading, designed to encourage people of all ages to take time to read. You can participate in this movement by hosting a D.E.A.R event in your schools in the month of April. More resources to help can be found online at www.dropeverythingandread.com .

Time: N/A

Age range: Any

Overview: Music can be used in many ways in the classroom to improve engagement, for example to help calm and ground students if they have just entered the classroom, to keep children focused or to use music to make teaching a topic more interesting. Furthermore, a fun activity could be to create a class song with your classroom, either as a way to learn new vocabulary or grammar, or to learn a certain topic.

Time: N/A

Age range: Any

Overview: Consider incorporating current events into the classroom. This is important as it gives children the opportunity to learn what is going on in the world around them, outside of school. You can choose fun activities to teach your children current events. For example, News Mapping is a fun activity where children are tasked to pick a news article from the front page of a newspaper and then pin where this story happened on a World Map.

Time: N/A