Student Engagement

STUDENT ENGAGEMENT OVERVIEW
Student engagement is key to student retention and mastery. In order to encourage more student engagement, I celebrate and track student growth on formative and summative assessments. At the beginning of the year, my students and I brainstorm and propose a classroom mission statement. Core to our mission is to have a "welcoming, joyful, and productive space" where we "celebrate every student and family". Therefore, all forms of student growth on assessments are celebrated.

​Students receive recognition for achievement, thorough process, consistency, completion, and other aspects important to assessment growth. In addition, I share student growth with their families by regularly making positive phone calls. With parental permission, I also send parents pictures and videos of their children demonstrating grit, leadership, or kindness in my classroom. Students enjoy the celebration and tracking because it reinforces that the hard work they put into learning Algebra II has visible rewards.

Please scroll down or click the table of contents below to learn more about how I engage students through celebration and trackers.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Student Celebration
Student Trackers

Student Celebration
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CELEBRATE EXEMPLARY WORK ON ASSESSMENTS
Much of mathematics is about the process. Thoroughly writing down mathematical process not only demonstrates one's knowledge of the material, but is helps others who are still learning the material. I emphasize to students the importance of showing work, and reward students who show clear work by offering partial credit on all summative assessments. Students practice showing their thinking process by annotating word problems, writing down their strategy, solving equations line-by-line, labelling diagrams, boxing and checking answers.

As pictured above, when students show exemplary work, I hang their work on our Bomb.com bulletin board. I keep track of which students have already been featured on the bulletin board. and rotate new students on the board each week. My students know that regardless of their formative or summative assessment score, they have an opportunity to be featured on Bomb.com if they show detailed work.
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CELEBRATE ASSESSMENT ACHIEVEMENT
I also celebrate student formative and summative assessment achievement. Pictured to the right is my Shout-Out board. On my Shout-Out board, I celebrate students with the highest scores on the last unit test, highest scores on speed drills (remedial math skills practiced in my inclusion class), consistent homework completion, and the highest overall class grades. Students who have consistently and thoroughly completed homework all week earn a homework pass which can be used for any future homework assignment. I update the shout-out boards every Monday morning, and students are eager to see who is newly featured on the Shout-Out board. There is friendly peer accountability as students compare their shout-outs with peers in their class and in other periods. 
CELEBRATE YEAR-LONG ASSESSMENT GROWTH
I celebrate students who are meeting or exceeding the academic goal of gaining at least 3 ACT points over the course of the school year. As seen below, I foster a friendly competition between my class periods by featuring the average class ACT score and growth on our classroom wall. I center ACT growth around its purpose - to help my students get into the best colleges. Before our daily ACT drill, I invite one student to share about why they want to go to college. College and ACT conversations occur regularly in my classroom, because they drive our learning. All students who have grown at least one point from one quarterly ACT exam to the next are also invited to attend a pizza and music party.

Student Trackers
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TRACK FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT COMPLETION
Every lesson before my students engage in new material, they check their homework answers to an answer key projected on the front board. As students are checking and correcting their homework answers, I am circulating the room to check homework for completion.

​As shown on the left, students keep a homework tracker, which I stamp throughout the week. At the end of the week, students turn in their tracker for a grade. I emphasize the importance of doing quality homework, and grade homework for thorough completion using a rubric on the tracker. To receive full credit, students must have tried and shown work on all homework problems. 
TRACK INDIVIDUAL ACADEMIC GOALS
Throughout the school year, I conference with students individually about their academic goals. I use individual conference to give all my student detailed, descriptive feedback on recent formative and summative assessments. For example, during a conference, I will review with a student why they did not receive full credit on their homework tracker. On Fridays, when students take a summative assessment, their homework for the weekend is to complete an academic reflection sheet. I vary the questions and content of the reflection each week to focus on a different aspect of motivation for excellent academic and behavioral performance.

​In the images below, students first read about making S.M.A.R.T. goals, and then made their own S.M.A.R.T academic goals.