Lisa Taylor's Blog

Grandview Elementary
Hi.  My name is Lisa Taylor and I am a 4th grade teacher at Grandview Elementary School in Bellevue, KY.  I am going in to my 9th year teaching there and I love it!  We departmentalize in all of the intermediate grades.  I currently teach Math and Social Studies to my own homeroom and Reading to the entire 4th grade.  Marzano, the author of The Highly Engaged Classroom believes that student engagement happens as a result of a teacher's careful planning and execution of specific strategies.  I completely agree and I work very hard at engaging my students and getting them interested in learning so I look forward to learning more strategies in this class. 

Ways I Effectively Engage Learners
  1.  Smart Board:
In my classroom, I have a Smart Board that I utilize on a daily basis, especially in Math and Reading.  The Smart Board is an interactive tool for the students.  You can use it as a huge touch screen computer and play games on the internet but there are also lots of tools to use and create your own activities.  For example, for a Geometry lesson in Math, the students can manipulate various polygons to practice slides, flips, etc...  An example for teaching fact and opinion in Reading, the students can drag various fact and opinion statements to the appropriate column in a fact and opinion T-chart.  The students really enjoy using this interactive tool.

2.  Document Camera:
I also have a document camera in my classroom that I use often.  It allows me to place something that the students may not be able to see well underneath and a magnified version will be on the projection screen.  I use this often in Math while going over Math problems in their book or workbook.  For example, the following day after a homework assignment, we will go over the answers.  I will put the sheet up on the document camera and work out the problems they had done the previous night.  It makes it a lot easier for the students and me to discuss the problems.

3.  Literature Circles:
In my Reading class, students are reading at various levels, as in all classrooms.  Literature Circles allow students to make a lot of choices and have a job to keep them involved in the book.  They will choose a book that interests them and read with a small group.  While reading, students will have jobs that they will rotate throughout the duration of the book.  Some of the jobs are Summarizers (write a summary of the chapter), Illustrators (draw a picture an event and write a caption for it), Connectors (make a real-life connection to something in the chapter), and Story Mappers (choose a graphic organizer to map out elements in the story).  These are just a few but the students seem to enjoy them very much and it seems to help with the comprehension of the story on top of it.