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"The Gallup Student Poll is an online poll made up of 20 well-researched questions designed to assess the hope, engagement, and wellbeing of students in the U.S. The poll takes eight to ten minutes to complete, and is entirely free to any public or private school in the United States. After your students complete the poll, you will receive a detailed report on the engagement level at your school. This report can be monumental in discovering elements of your school community that can be improved upon to increase student engagement. The act of administering the Gallup Student Poll, or any poll designed to research student engagement, is also an excellent opportunity to connect with your students. Explain to them why you're asking them to complete the poll and let them know that their school cares about their wellbeing. Reassure your students that you are listening to their feedback and that the results will be studied carefully and acted upon. Once you have a good idea of how engaged your students are, you can start to create activities and programs to increase their engagement."

"Throughout all four years at Big Picture, I felt valued, and I felt like my voice mattered. From my experience at Big Picture -- and from knowing what engaged me in my learning -- here are four practical tips that you can adopt to engage your students."

"The key to getting kids to read deeply in any format is to have them engage with the text in meaningful ways. In the digital space, that means disrupting a pattern of skipping around, writing short chats and getting lost down the rabbit hole of the internet. It means teaching kids ways to break down a complex text, find key ideas, organize them and defend them. Practicing those skills in class can be time-consuming, but it also builds good digital reading habits that hopefully become second nature. "The goal in almost all the strategies is to slow the kids down so they are focusing on this text," Hess said. "Number two is to engage them in an active way with the text, and number three you want to encourage oral discourse. And number four you want them to do some reflection." Those steps should sound familiar to teachers because they are important for any kind of reading for comprehension and analysis. The trick for teachers is to learn how to transfer these processes into the digital space and push them even further."

"At EL Education, we believe that this is best done consciously and intentionally. We are unafraid to say that teachers and schools shape student character. We specify what we believe they should work towards: students who are not just effective learners, but also ethical people, and active contributors to a better world. We believe that this is supported when educators elevate student voice and leadership and model a schoolwide culture of respect, compassion, honesty, integrity, and kindness. In times of crisis, small-scale or large, this also means modeling courage in standing up for those values, and standing against racism, injustice, acts of hate, and the undermining of public education. One unheralded but powerful possibility is this: giving students real material to engage with and supporting them to do work that matters to them. This is what helps students become ethical adults who contribute to a better world. In EL Education schools, this deeper learning is the daily fare of classrooms. And, it's what empowers them to engage in civil debate. If students are fearful about what may happen to them or their loved ones, we can help them research what has actually been said or proposed, and what is possible according to the U.S. Constitution as it has so far been interpreted. We can help them respond in ways that build their own agency: writing letters, like students at World of Inquiry, or making videos and organizing actions like the Melrose Leadership Academy Peace and Kindness March."

"Empathy is often confused with sympathy, which is a pretty extraordinary error depending on how tightly wound you are about these things (and whose definitions you stand behind). Dr. Brené Brown offers a divisive take on the difference: "Empathy fuels connections, sympathy drives disconnection." Teaching someone to feel what others feel and sit with emotions that aren't their own couldn't be any further from the inherent pattern of academics, which is always decidedly other. Teaching always begins with detachment -- learn this skill or content strand that is now apart from you. Empathy is the opposite -- it starts in the other, and finishes there without leaving. Here's one way to consider it. Without empathy, you're teaching content instead of students. The concept of teachers as primarily responsible for content distribution is a dated one, but even seeking to "engage" students misses the calling of teaching. To teach a child is to miss that child. You must understand them for who they are and where they are, not for what you hope to prepare them for. "Giving knowledge" and "engaging students" in pursuit of pre-selected knowledge are both natural processes of formal education -- and both make empathy hard to come by. So where to start doing something different? How should you "teach it"? How will you know it when you see it?"

"Out of Eden Learn is a unique online learning community designed to accompany Paul Salopek's Out of Eden Walk. Through Out of Eden Learn, students from around the world can engage in Paul's journey and all that it represents. They explore their own neighborhoods, investigate contemporary global issues, and reflect on how they as individuals fit into a broader geographical and historical context. In addition, they share their perspectives and interact with one another on an exciting digital platform that uses social media as a springboard for deep, meaningful learning. The goal is to ignite students' interest in the wider world and support them to become more informed, thoughtful, and engaged "global citizens.""

"I know that as a former English teacher, movement found its way into many of my "special" lessons, but it was often a missing ingredient of daily instruction. When the main focus of a lesson was reading and writing (as many are in the English classroom), movement was minimal. I've included some strategies that teachers of any content area can use to integrate movement into lessons.  When you have a lesson that looks "sedentary," integrating one of these strategies will surely increase students' learning and engagement."

"I know that as a former English teacher, movement found its way into many of my "special" lessons, but it was often a missing ingredient of daily instruction. When the main focus of a lesson was reading and writing (as many are in the English classroom), movement was minimal. I've included some strategies that teachers of any content area can use to integrate movement into lessons.  When you have a lesson that looks "sedentary," integrating one of these strategies will surely increase students' learning and engagement."

"Like many people I consider myself a lifelong learner, but more and more I have to work hard to stay open minded. But the need for learning never ends, so your desire to do so should always outweigh your desire to be right. The world is changing and new ideas pop up everyday; incorporating them into your life will keep you engaged and relevant. The following are the methods I use to stay open and impressionable. They'll work for you too. No matter how old you get."

"Robert Stahl (1990) identified eight categories of wait time. When we formally introduce wait time, these periods of silence are trans- formed from periods of awkwardness into valuable moments of silence. The first category is the type of wait time we've already discussed: the time between a teacher's question and the student's answer. The other seven are as follows:"

Melissa MongI: "Improv enthusiasts rave about its educational value. Not only does it hone communication and public speaking skills, it also stimulates fast thinking and engagement with ideas. On a deeper level, improv chips away at mental barriers that block creative thinking - that internal editor who crosses out every word before it appears on a page - and rewards spontaneous, intuitive responses, Criess says. Because improv depends on the group providing categorical support for every answer, participants also grow in confidence and feel more connected to others."

""There are expectations on our kids to ... be a charismatic extrovert," says Kasevich. Even if it's unconsciously, she says, teachers tend to give more attention to the louder students. Kasevich admits she did it too: calling on the kids who raised their hands first. The two-day course started with reimagining class participation, which in some schools can count for a big portion of students' grades. Kasevich would prefer it be called classroom engagement. "Being present and connecting doesn't have to take place through lots of speech," she says. Why not try drawing, writing or working in pairs? Or, Kasevich suggests, have students walk around the room, writing ideas on tacked-up pieces of paper. They can respond to each other's ideas - like a sort of silent dialogue."

"Students still use computers for writing outside of class, especially essays, but all writing in class happens by hand: notes from the whiteboard, notes from somebody's discussion comment, notes about which shoes to wear to Jim and Julia's party…. I tell them about the research, and, yes, they're skeptical-of course they are. It's like taking all their cuddly toys from the crib and convincing them it's still a place called home. But at least I know they're all present, if only functionally. I don't need to constantly worry about what might be going on in screenland. The classroom feels more like a classroom than an office, the conversations stronger precisely because more students usually otherwise engaged get involved. It comes down to a sense of kids being present together in a unified space, a space that allows for communities and communication to develop. Romantic, yes, as students are rarely present in the ways we aspire for them to be, but at least without technology, they space-out within the confines of their own imaginations. For instance, doodling when distracted instead of resorting to a virtual rabbit warren of visual excitement. As doodlers they are makers."

We've done the math, and below you'll find the 100 most-commented-upon questions we've ever asked that call for persuasive writing. Many of them are, of course, on topics teenagers care about - technology, video games, sports and gender issues. Others are classic debate issues like government regulation and gun violence. But, perhaps unsurprisingly, the broad topic that seems to engage students the most? School - from questions about homework to cheating, bad report cards, bullying and gym class. So skim the list and pick issues that interest you. Each question is linked to a related Times article, which you can access free, and includes additional subquestions to help you flesh out your ideas. "

"Modern Love is a series of weekly reader-submitted essays that explore the joys and tribulations of love. Each week, an actor also reads one of the essays in a podcast. Though the stories are often about romantic love, they also take on love of family, friends, and even pets. This teacher finds their themes universal and the range of essays engaging models to help her students find their own voices."

"Transform how you teach Harper Lee's classic novel "To Kill a Mockingbird" with this multimedia collection.   Our study guide and lesson plans will help you use Mockingbird's setting as a springboard for engaging students in issues of justice, gender, and race. This collection also offers African American voices, which are absent from Mockingbird's narration, so you can deepen student perspectives of this classic novel."

"Language merely reflects our way of trying to make sense of the world. - Frank Smith Frank Smith (1982) says 'writing touches every part of our lives'. One of the first reasons we write is because it is a tool for communication in culture. It gives us the ability the share information over time and space with multiple individuals (explaining, recounting & opinion). It can also be used as a permanent record or as a statement e.g. in history, geography  & science genres. The third cultural aspect for writing is artistry (narrative and poetry). Finally, there is also the personal aspect to writing. Writing allows us all to reflect, express our perceptions of self, to socially dream or to be critical (memoir). By writing, we find out what we know; what we think. Ultimately though, writing is a means for us to express ourselves in the world, make sense of the world or impose ourselves upon it. The question now is why do children write at school? For these purposes? - Not often. There is a massive discrepancy between the writing done in the real-world and that of the classroom. Donald Graves says 'all children want to write'. It is just a case of allowing them to write about the things they are interested in. As Frank Smith says, 'all children can write if they can speak it.' If they can talk about it, they can write it down. The transmission of narrow decontextualized writing skills; that English is just a formal system to be learnt. The insistence on task-orientated writing. The insistence on teacher-chosen writing tasks. The insistence on the use of external stimulus (literature units, film-clips, topic-writing) at the expense of children's knowledge, interests, loves, talents and idiosyncrasies. The formal rather than functional teaching of grammar. These examples embody the 'commonsense' assumptions which claim an authority which is supposedly natural and unshakable. Writing in classrooms at present isn't seen by children as important

"What we do know is that a plethora of assessment-related research has shed light not just on the importance of students' mindsets, but also on the importance of continual feedback and how active retrieval of information, in carefully spaced intervals, can produce long-lasting learning. Research also shows that providing students with choice enhances attention and engagement -- and confirms that the arts can help deepen long-term memory consolidation (Hardiman). Specifically, the following research is helping to change our understanding of the correlation between teaching and learning -- and altering our approaches to student assessment."

"Project Ed is a platform dedicated to educational video made for and by 21st century learners. The core of Project Ed is an open, community-driven approach to content. We start by identifying K-12 concepts where a video has the potential to create a meaningful impact.Then we design contests to take these lessons out of the classroom and put them in the hands of digital storytellers. Each contest starts with a "creative brief," that includes everything needed to achieve a specific learning goal. Once the brief is launched on Projected.com, creators from all over craft original narratives to teach in unforgettable ways. Each brief generates hundreds of new ideas and a multitude of submissions. This process brings together the rigor of curriculum experts and the passion of creators to build an open library of effective, engaging lessons."

"In order to see a rise in the proportion of students who class themselves as engaged in school, we must build a better understanding of how they are learning outside school and take account of that in our learning and teaching practice. There are (at least) six powerful motivations fueling learning socially. I call them the Six "Do-Its" and explain them as follows."