Communication strategies to engage students:
Communication strategies to make the classroom positive and inspiring place for learning:
Be clear and seek clarity:
Engage in equitable and positive classroom behaviour:
Teacher to treat all the students equally with respect and dignity. Provide same level of attention to all the students irrespective of their academic performance to create an encouraging and inspiring learning atmosphere in the classroom.
Help students develop their ability to use their own strategies for gaining acceptance from their teachers and peers:
Provide Opportunities for students to get know and accept each other:
Exhibit humour:
Respond with wonderment and Awe:
Questioning and posing problems:
Respond positively to students’ incorrect responses or lack of responses:
Respond appropriately to other’s feelings and level of knowledge:
Respond positively to the answers given by the students:
A happy facial expression, a nod or verbal acknowledgement of effort encourages other students as well as the respondent (Ewing et al., 2010, p. 100).
Vary the positive reinforcement offered when students give correct response:
Provide students with clarity about the knowledge that task addresses:
Provide students with clear expectations of performance levels for tasks:
Provide inspiring feedback:
- Establish clear expectations and rules – rules should be clear, enforceable consistently, stated simply and positively, and be kept to a manageable number and reward students who abide by the rules
- Make eye contact with each student to engage in equitable and positive classroom behaviour so that students feel accepted
- Exhibit pleasant gestures and facial expressions as they are essential nonverbal communicative behaviours to develop trust and relationship with others
- Give them attention and time to promote sense of comfort and order
- Social-emotional Learning (SEL) philosophies in communicating and promoting wellbeing of students
- Treat and communicate positively with all the students equally to build academic trust and positive rapport with the students.
- Try to build trust, treat everyone with consideration and respect, acknowledge students efforts and accomplishments, create positive atmosphere and always mindful of students needs for warmth and encouragement.
- Respect individual differences, have a ‘caring’ attitude, show interest in students, and provide stimulating feedback
- Be sensitive to individual student's backgrounds during communicating with diverse students
- Avoid treating low-expectancy students differently from high-expectancy students in terms of communicating a positive effective tone
- Listen carefully but not interrupt unless they are moving off-track or completely unfocussed. Acknowledge correct answers and respond with positive reinforcement. Handle incomplete answers by reinforcing what is correct and then asking probing questions (Ewing et al., 2010, p. 101).
- Exhibit positive affect and excitement for preparing students mentally for learning a new skill
- Show passion and excitement in learning and motivate students to maintain positive spirit and keep persevering
- Communicate to students the importance of strong and positive connections with parents, peers, extended family members, teachers and others within the community (Killen, 2013).
- Be a positive role-model by exhibiting positive communication
Communication strategies to make the classroom positive and inspiring place for learning:
- Establish and communicate classroom rules and procedures:
- Articulate and demonstrate the boundaries of pro-social behaviour
- Publish the rules where students can read them
- Keep the rules positive, short, simple, clear and are enforceable
- Discuss the rules with the class
- Model, model, model – demonstrate good social skills e.g. appropriate manners, tone of voice, body language, punctuality and dress.
Be clear and seek clarity:
- Encourage students to be accurate and seek accuracy.
- Inspire students to always re-check their work and advice students to take the help of their peers to check each-others work.
- Motivate students to set and expect high standards of their work.
Engage in equitable and positive classroom behaviour:
Teacher to treat all the students equally with respect and dignity. Provide same level of attention to all the students irrespective of their academic performance to create an encouraging and inspiring learning atmosphere in the classroom.
Help students develop their ability to use their own strategies for gaining acceptance from their teachers and peers:
- Inspire students to take responsibility for gaining acceptance from teachers and peers
- Ask students to identify and discuss potential strategies and then record them in a way that can be regularly updated and used
- Emphasise with students that using strategies to gain acceptance positively influences the learning environment for everyone
Provide Opportunities for students to get know and accept each other:
- Encourage them to establish relationships with individuals and groups other than those with whom they already have friendships
- Ask each student to interview another student at the beginning of the year and then introduce that student to the rest of the class
- Encourage all students to share about themselves and their heritage
- Use structured “get-to-know-you” activities periodically throughout the year
Exhibit humour:
- Teacher to maintain pleasant gesture and encourage positive and energetic humour in classroom activities
- Discuss with students how laughter transcends all human beings and its positive effects on psychological functions (drop on the pulse rate, the secretion of endorphins, an increased oxygen in the blood etc.)
- Humour helps to liberate creativity and provoke higher level thinking skills, finding novel relationships, visual imagery, making analogies and learn to laugh at situations and themselves
Respond with wonderment and Awe:
- Teacher to show enthusiasm, curiosity, excitement and passion in learning mathematical concepts and doing activities, and inspire students to adapt to respond with wonderment and awe.
- The most beautiful experience in the world is the experience of the mysterious - Albert Einstein
Questioning and posing problems:
- Encourage students to ask higher-order thinking questions to fill the gaps between what they know and don’t know
- Advise students that one of the distinguishing characteristics between humans and other forms of life is our inclination, and ability to FIND problems to solve. Effective problem solvers know how to ask questions.
Respond positively to students’ incorrect responses or lack of responses:
- Encourage students to answer the questions by providing stimulating hints for inducing curiosity and enthusiasm in students.
- Ask students reasonable, easy and interesting questions initially until they develop the confidence that they can do it.
- Exhibit pleasant gestures and give positive feedback to students for varied responses. Emphasise that it is okay to make mistakes as long as they are trying.
- Then encourage students to answer the questions of different degrees of cognitive complexity.
Respond appropriately to other’s feelings and level of knowledge:
- Encourage students to maintain balance between being sensitive to other’s feelings (and level of knowledge) and achieving the goals of the interaction
- Advise students that this skill can increase the chances of successful communication with people from different cultures or backgrounds and helps to develop excellent interpersonal abilities
- Tell students try to put themselves in the other person’s shoes and think how might they feel if they were in that situation?
Respond positively to the answers given by the students:
A happy facial expression, a nod or verbal acknowledgement of effort encourages other students as well as the respondent (Ewing et al., 2010, p. 100).
Vary the positive reinforcement offered when students give correct response:
- Maintain effective tone of voice to ensure that students understand what is being reinforced
- Use silence along with nods or other body language, such as eye contact, that encourages students to elaborate on their answers
- Help students analyse their own answers and stimulate them to develop curiosity, enthusiasm and higher-order thinking skills
- Give praise privately (publicly) according to the students preference of receiving feedback
- Provide enthusiastic, innovative, meaningful and relevant praise
Provide students with clarity about the knowledge that task addresses:
- Identify the knowledge each task is intended to teach and then communicate this clearly to students so that they know what they are supposed to be learning as a result of doing the task
- Encourages students to monitor their learning progress and improve accordingly
- This helps students to develop the in-depth knowledge, sense of achievement and confidence
- Promotes positive attitude towards learning
Provide students with clear expectations of performance levels for tasks:
- Provide performance standards to students when they beginning a task so that they know and understand the criteria others will use to evaluate their work
- Make students understand the characteristics of performances that exceed the standards and be able to describe those performances that do not meet the standards
- Communicate the criteria to students through checklists and rubrics.
- Help students understand how specific knowledge is valuable:
- Explain to students how the information will be useful to them later as they learn more complex concepts, make interdisciplinary connections and complete advanced activities
- Help students relate the information to real-life experiences in which the information can be used
- Have students identify and share with one another why they think specific information or tasks might be worthwhile or important to their academic learning and beyond
Provide inspiring feedback:
- Give feedback to keep students “on target” for achievement
- Give genuine praise that is specific to their behaviour and tied in with the learning objectives
- Reinforce positive behaviours while focusing on the positive as well as areas for development
- Encourage goal setting and suggest alternative aspects for improvement
- Provide feedback in an appropriate time and place