Session 4, Part 1: Defining Student Engagement

Create Your Ideal Curriculum, Session 4: Create Conditions for Learning

In this final session, we describe, apply and sustain effective learning environments for our students. This requires knowledge about what engagement is and is not. In addition, we explore a framework for supporting student engagement in the tasks developed from a unit of study. Discussion and reflection are two strategies we will employ to structure the thinking and doing what is necessary for realizing an ideal curriculum that works for all students. Just getting started? Begin with Session 1.

Up until 3rd grade, I went through the motions. Learning was something you did at school. Take your books to guided reading, complete this worksheet, go to lunch and recess, repeat. Although I was pretty young, I do not believe I viewed my education as relevant to my life outside of school.

And then my 3rd grade teacher read aloud Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume. The book was funny, relatable (I had younger siblings like Peter, the main character), and captured some of the angst of…