Engaged or On Task

Photo Credit: wordpress.com

I was fortunate enough to attend a professional development opportunity last month with Irene Fountas where we were discussing the role of a leader in literacy instruction. At one point in the day she asked, "What is the difference between students that are on task and students that are engaged?" She paused for a brief moment to let that ruminate and then moved on with the larger point she was constructing. I will be totally honest, I have no idea what she said for the next 4-5 minutes. This one seemingly innocent question had sparked a series of synaptic sparks that sent my mind racing. I have spent the last month thinking and reading about this question and have experienced a shift in my thinking.

One month and one day ago, I would have used on-task behavior as a synonym for student engagement. I would have said that the studenst being on task was the behavioral evidence that I could use to observe their engagement in the learning process. However, I now find myself asking that just because a student is busy, does it mean that she is actively learning anything?
I read this blog from Education Week where one of the thinkers interviewed gave this example:

Feel the difference between these two sets of instructions:"You're going to read the next three pages.  When you finish, you are going to answer the five questions that follow the reading." 

Vs. 

"When I tell you to begin, you will have 1 minute 45 seconds. You are going to read the next paragraph looking for the main point.  As you read, you are going to highlight any words or phrases that support what you believe is the main point. When you are finished, be prepared to share with a partner or with the entire class.  You may begin."

I could observe the students in both classes and say that they are on-task, but which two approaches are more likely to lead to active engagement by students?  In the second example, there is a more concrete, time-bound expectation for student thinking and action.  The task is in a smaller chunk which allows less opportunity for students to disengaged and there is an expectation that students will publicly share their thinking.  In one class period you could accomplish the first task with a group of third graders, or you could do the second task 3-4 times in the same period with different paragraphs.  Which would be a better approach for teaching main idea?  Which approach would likely have more students thinking, talking and writing about main idea?  Which approach would be more likely to result in learning that would last beyond that class period?

Engagement means agency for students.  It means that they are actively involved in and contributing towards the learning process.  It means that they are working hard; engaged students go home tired at the end of the day.  Engaged learning looks like a classroom where students spend the majority of their time thinking, talking or writing about content and/or ideas.  While teachers are presenting students with new information and coaching the learning process, they are not doing the thinking for the students or spending the majority of the lesson speaking at the students.  

Planning for Engagment

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

The most important question we should always ask ourselves before planning a lesson is: "What exactly will the students know and be able to do, or do better, by the end of this lesson?"  Determining the learning objective and clearly articulating it for ourselves helps us to examine activities we have planned to ensure they support a student's active engagement in that skill.  The internet provides us with a plethora of ideas, ready made activities, and fully developed lesson plans.  However, as educators we are responsible for curating these resources and making purposeful decisions about their effectiveness in supporting our students' active engagement in learning.  A fancy worksheet downloaded of TpT that keeps kids busy at a center for 20 minutes, may be nothing more than a really fancy low-level activity that turns students into passive learners.  There is an expression that says, "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig."  Let's make sure we are not dressing up any pigs.  Let's design lessons that engage students in higher level thinking like categorizing, evaluation and creating.  I discussed the idea of higher level thinking at the elementary level in an earlier post here.