Keeping Students Engaged During Long Class Periods

Researchers say that a child’s attention span can be calculated by multiplying their current age by two or three minutes. If this is true, most of my high school students are zoning out after 30 minutes of instruction, if not sooner. Our school’s 88-minute class periods can fly by or feel interminable for students and teachers alike. For a new teacher, figuring out how to manage a long class period can feel particularly daunting. In order to maximize the attention of your students during longer class periods, consider the following tips.

Children thrive on brief lessons that feel routine. Chunking lessons is simply breaking the units of instruction into different segments. A common approach to chunking is the I do, we do, you do approach to instruction. In my classroom I begin by launching an essential question, sharing background information to give context to a novel, or asking students to take notes on visual vocabulary. Then I transition to “we do” by having students form various groups to practice the skill or goal I have launched. Finally, students move into independent work to demonstrate individual understanding of the desired skill.

Direct Instruction: I Do

Recent studies show that lecturing in the “I do” form does not foster long-term understanding or memory retention. Because of this, I like to include variations on the common note-taking routine.

For example, sometimes I will start the first chunk of class with a brief TED Talk to elicit student conversation and engagement. We are currently reading The Grace Year, by Kim Liggett, in my 10th-grade English language arts course. This week I began one of our classes with a five-minute TED-Ed video: Ugly History: Witch Hunts. Following the video, I pose guiding questions such as how larger themes of ignorance and hysteria might influence the characters in our text. Students become active participants in their learning from the start of the bell when we make connections in conversation.

In each section of my chunked learning, I often use variation in my routines in the medium I choose to present content information. I try to use a variety of techniques and strategies so that students remain engaged. If they listen in one part of a lesson, I incorporate student movement in another. If they write in one part of a lesson, I try to have them engage in meaningful dialogue in another. Altering daily routines is also helpful. I encourage students to create active reading notes where they complete traditional text questions using symbols, quotations, phrases, and images to create sketchnotes as they transition into their own work in groups or independently.

Group Work: We Do

The second chunk of my class builds on “I do” leading activities by having students work in various forms of groups. For example, after my students take notes on new visual vocabulary, they practice the words in a game form application called Blooket. Following their practice with the new terms,  I have them form into groups of four to create vocabulary index cards. Students then play what I refer to as “Heads-up” vocab, similar to the game played on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. One person has a stack of index cards on their head visible to their peers. They try to answer the hints from their peers to select the right term. The student with the most words answered correctly wins!

In connection to beginning class with a TED Talk video and discussion, my students read a section of The Grace Year together as a class or read in small groups. To engage in active reading strategies, I assign guiding questions or sketchnotes in which students extract important themes or analyze character development during the reading of the text. I usually let them collaborate to complete these annotations as a group.

Arielle Keller and colleagues note that when students have the opportunity to increase their social interactions in class, there is a greater chance that these networks will extend learning beyond the classroom into real-world experiences. I use my chunked time to allow my students to become teachers. I allow them to make personal connections to their learning that they can share with their peers. For example, Mud and Ink Teaching have published an outstanding choice board that partners with The Grace Year. I have students open the choice board to decide whether they want to make deeper connections to the text in the form of poetry, art, culture, or music. They then engage in small group discussions about their learning choice. 

This conversation tends to focus on personal connections to important plot details or characters. They can talk about their lived experiences in comparison with their extended choice board selection and the novel. Everyone is then given a voice as opposed to the small percentage of students answering daily questions. Additionally, vocabulary games and any form of competition tend to make strangers become connected.

Independent Work: You Do

The third chunk of class focuses on students working independently in order to demonstrate understanding. Individual assignments could vary from creating their own sentences with their vocabulary from Blooket, generating artificial intelligence pictures using their vocabulary terms, or taking a more traditional quiz.

When focusing on a literary topic, I might ask students to demonstrate understanding by generating a response to an open-ended question that requires them to make connections between their TED Talk discussion and deeper themes discussed in the text. I have also utilized multiple open-ended questions posted to large Post-it Notes around the room that students respond to silently with markers to encourage movement and provide examples of responses for struggling learners. Students sign their initials to keep their names somewhat anonymous. This also allows me to track their comprehension individually. 

Additionally, providing opportunities for movement can help engage learners. Giving students the opportunity to move their seats during an extended period of time, use the hallway, take a trip outside, or visit another area of the school such as the library also boosts engagement. Of course, all of these incentives require trust and responsibility, which should ideally improve the relationship you have with your class.

With these methods integrated in my daily practice, I often find the 88-minute class blocks going by faster than when I once taught 45-minute class periods. With longer class periods, students have a greater opportunity to connect with their peers and learn more about themselves through the exploration of your content area in multiple formats. Embrace the extension of time to increase student engagement.