Increasing Academic
Engagement
Consider . . .
• Signs of disengagement that lead to school dropout begin
early, often as early as elementary school.
• Over 60% of students who eventually dropout of high school
failed ≥ 25% of their course credits in 9th grade.
• Only about 50% of high school completers have the necessary
skills for success in college and work.
Bottom Line
Credits
Earned
=
Research tells us to remediate academic risks
that lead to dropout prevention, we must . . .
Increase Academic Engagement
What is Academic Engagement?
• Most visible engagement subtype within the
classroom
- Includes: attention, academic responding, rotation of
attention and academic learning time
• Frequently tracked by school personnel
- Includes: homework completed, credits earned,
grades and time on task
What the Research Tells Us
• High rates of academic learning time are
positively correlated to academic achievement
• Three broad categories:
- Instructional quality and delivery
- Supplemental support for teachers and students
- Classroom structures to enhance students’
substantive interaction
Classroom Structures:
What Effective Teachers Do
What Effective Teachers Do
 Maximize time on academic tasks
 Minimize time on non-instructional activities
 Manage an organized and efficient learning environment
 Provide students with tasks that allow them to be
successful
 Maximize use of active or direct teaching procedures
with groups of students
Lewis 2006
Student performance is enhanced when …
 Teachers use research-based strategies
 Teachers use instructional time efficiently, while providing
multiple means of engagement
 Teachers provide frequent reinforcement
 Teachers provide culturally diverse students with equal
opportunities to participate
 Teachers build positive relationships with students
 Teachers and parents build supportive partnerships
Supplemental Supports and
Enrichments for Students
Provide Academic support and enrichment
Individual
support /
tutoring
Small group
instruction for
note taking
and study
skills
Extra
learning time
and Credit
Recovery
Intensive in
school and
out of school
programs
Instructional Quality & Delivery
Providing rigorous and relevant instruction
Activity 1- Think Pair Share
1. Think about what rigorous and relevant
instruction means to you
2. Share with your team mates
3. Formulate a definition that reflects your
shared perspectives
Provide rigorous and relevant instruction
“First Line of Defense”
Potential Roadblocks & Possible Solutions
• Resistance to integrating CTE into academic curricula
-
Provide professional development on smooth integration of academic
content with career-related info
• State standards and college admission requirements
• Discourage integration of academic and career and
technical education
-
Relevant career examples and academic courses that cover the expected
content can be integrated into traditional course content, titles, and
descriptions
The aim of integrating academics and CTE is to provide instruction that
makes the two complementary rather than competing
• Students lack interest in attending college
-
Stress the connection between academics and professional success
Have students visit colleges and interact with their students
& staff
Instructional
Design
Effective
Teaching
Instructional
Delivery
Effective Instruction
• Includes the creation and implementation of systemic
improvement activities that focus efforts on changing teaching
and learning practices
• Involves students in activities that promote academic
engagement that leads to academic success and the acquisition
of useful employment skills
• Promotes learning through instruction, practice, feedback and
encouragement
Practical Guidelines
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Prioritize instruction around critical content
Pre-teach requisite skills to ensure success with new materials
Carefully select and sequence instructional examples
Scaffold instruction to promote learner independence
Model and demonstrate instructional tasks
Provide frequent and meaningful practice and review options
Use visual representations of big ideas
Deliver timely academic feedback -both corrective and
confirmatory
Initial Assessment
• collect historical data
• formal standardized assessment
• diagnostic assessment
Progress Monitoring
•determine appropriate starting level
•monitor progress frequently
•graph student scores
•evaluate progress
•determine need for instructional
•modifications
Instructional Delivery
•secure attention
•pace briskly
-frequent responses
-adequate think time
•monitor student performance
•provide feedback
-systematic corrective
-specific reinforcement
Instructional Design
• analyze content for sameness
• select range of examples
• select language of instruction
• sequence language and examples
• organize into daily lessons
• schedule practice of examples
• provide for cumulative review
Activity 2
Discuss with your team ways in which your school currently
integrates academic content with career and skills-based themes
to make learning more relevant for students.
List two strategies for improvement in each area :
• Professional development
• Multiple college and career pathways
• Awareness and exposure to college and careers
• Instructional practices
Instructional Practices
•
Instructional practice should be informed by high
quality research, when available, and by the best
professional judgment and experience of
accomplished classroom teachers.
Roles Schools Play
• Schools play a key role in guiding early preparation
for postsecondary life:
-
Foster academic preparation and achievement
Support parent involvement
Provide college and career planning information
Help students through the many steps in postsecondary
planning
Improving Instructional Content
and Delivery
• Use academic departments and small learning communities as key
venues for academic improvement
• Use teacher meetings as an additional opportunity to focus on
improving instructional practices
• Provide professional development activities that involve teachers
working together to:
-
align curricula with standards
review assignments for rigor
discuss ways of making classroom activities more engaging
Assisting Students Who Enter High
School with Poor Academic Skills
• Develop/adopt programs that teach youth learning
strategies, such as:
-
Demonstration of competence in content area courses
Improving students’ attention and memory
-
Tutoring
Credit recovery
• Provide support for students below basic in reading and
math, especially those students at greatest risk for dropping
out of school
Providing Reading Instruction at
Secondary Levels
•
•
•
More and more schools are screening 9th graders entering high
school for reading problems/deficits
Students identified with reading problems/deficits are placed in
structured corrective reading programs designed for adolescents
struggling to read
Example programs include :
-
•
Corrective Reading-Scientific Reading Associates, Language! and Sopris
West
NOTE: 75% of students with reading problems in 3rd grade exhibit
reading problems in 9th grade
-
TIME is not an effective intervention!!!!!
Reading Instruction at Secondary
Levels
• Teach strategies for vocabulary and reading
comprehension
• Fluency strategies
• Study guide strategies (teachers develop study guides
that students use to help them identify and understand
key concepts in content area reading)
• Reciprocal reading strategies
• Text mapping strategies
• Word analysis strategies
Enhancing Core Math Instruction
•
•
•
•
Regular use of teacher modeling and demonstrations
Visual representations of math ideas
Frequent opportunities for student practice
Instructional scaffolding
Helping Students to Address Problems that
Interfere With Learning
• Provide or assist students in obtaining social, health, and
other personal resources to meet their emergent basic
needs
• Personalize programs to address individual student
needs and improve post-school outcomes
• Create multiple pathways for career and college access
Find the right school setting
Regular School  Magnet School  Charter School
Career Academy  GED Program  etc.
Support Student Engagement
Work Based Learning
From Research to Practice
Teacher focused strategies on increasing
academic engagement
In the Classroom
Examples of Universal Strategies:
• Provide multiple opportunities for learning new concepts
• Expand student content learning areas into application
• Provide opportunities for tutoring academic enrichment, and scaffolding for
students with marginalized skills
• Use principles of effective instruction (e.g. direct instruction, scaffolding,
guided practice, informed feedback, pacing of lessons)
• Increase time on task and substantive interaction through cooperative learning,
whole class, or group instruction and peer assisted learning strategies
Examples of Targeted Strategies:
• Utilize after school programs (tutoring, homework help)
• Help parents to understand and set expectations
From Research to Practice
Guiding Questions - Moving Forward
Guiding Questions: Focus on Effective
Design and Delivery of Instruction
1) Are teachers using research based effective teaching
principles and strategies that improve student
performance consistently?
•
•
•
•
•
Modeling and guided practice
Feedback and error correction
Differentiated instruction
Guided notes, timed trials, visual imagery
Progress monitoring data to adjust instruction
Guiding Questions: Focus on Effective
Design and Delivery of Instruction,
Standards and Curriculum
2) Are students at risk for dropping out of school being
instructed in the core reading, writing, and math
programs that will lead to a regular diploma?
3) Are students provided appropriate scaffolds, extended
learning programs and targeted interventions to master
content?
Best Practices
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•
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Exhibit enthusiasm
Display awareness of what is happening in the classroom
Use wait time after questioning (Cook,Tankersley, & HarjusolaWebb, 2008)
Review previous instruction
Monitor student performance
Circulate and scan the instructional environment
Recognize appropriate behavior (Cook, Tankersley, & HarjusolaWebb, 2008).
 Effective teaching techniques combined with the use of an EBP
provide the opportunity to maximize student outcomes
Questions to Consider at Team Time
• What changes in teacher practice could reduce extent of
failure?
• What obstacles (individualistic practice, entrenched
beliefs, unwillingness to change) might need to be
addressed?
• What interventions might need to be set in place to reduce
extent of course failure?
• What steps would need to be taken to put these
interventions into place?
Additional Information
Contact:
phomberg@k12.wv.us
sbeck@k12.wv.us
dlharless@k12.wv.us
sbaker@k12.wv.us
lbost8@uncc.edu