Engaged Learning

    This week I have been focusing on engaged learning in the classrooms. I have had the opportunity to watch the teachers engage with the children and truly get them involved on a meaningful level. One of the things I saw was the use of a program that breaks the kids up into groups and gives them each a job. This program is called Kaegan. Each student takes turn doing each job within each group. I loved how it gave the kids responsibilities and a part to play in coming up with the answers.
   Another thing I saw was a teacher asking one child from each group to get white boards, another child to get markers, and another student to get erasers. Then they worked as a group to come up with the final answer to a math problem, then one student at a time would raise their boards to show their answers. This got the kids involved in getting supplies out and again using separate roles to accomplish answers as a group.
  The last example of engaged learning I saw that really struck me was when a teacher was teaching a math concept and had different students come up to the board to show how they got their answer to the same problem and each student just happen to solve the problem slightly differently, and it was totally ok. She told the group that there were a few ways to get the same answer and that they could do whatever way works best for them, this is so opposite of what I was taught as a kid and I really liked it!