Post #6 How does the teacher engage the students and how effective are these?

    In both of the classrooms that I spent time in, the teachers were amazing at engaging their students. In the special needs class, the teacher used a lot of visual aides, slide presentations and songs to keep the students interested and participating.  I was able to help in different centers that had different games for the concepts that the kids were trying to learn.  The kids seemed excited to be playing fun games as they were leaning new things. I loved seeing the variety of ways that the teacher used to keep the kids interested.  I think the songs and rhymes were some of the kid's favorite ways of learning.  They laughed and sang loudly as they showed me how they remembered some of the math rules.
   On one of the days that I was in the first grade classroom, the teacher was talking about weather.  She had different pictures that she showed the students and they talked about what they knew about what was going on.  All of the kids were excited to tell what they knew and had personal stories to share.  The teacher had the students start on an art project that had to do with weather and they seemed excited to do something hands on.
    I think all of the ways the teachers used to involve their students worked very well.  If something didn't seem to be effective or was losing the children's interest, the teacher changed her plan and moved on to something she knew would engage them.
   I loved seeing all the different ways that the teachers used to involve the students and to keep their attention.  I am getting a lot of great ideas for the time when I have my own classroom.