How to Engineer Classroom Activities

Engineering classroom activities is challenging.

Perhaps one of the most challenging aspects of teaching is the ability to build and deliver a sufficiently challenging and accessible classroom activity. Striking a balance between too difficult and too easy is like walking a tightrope; lean one way or the other and the activity will fall flat on its face. Engineering classroom activities requires you to focus on the educational standards you wish to work towards in the activity and lesson and then to work backwards from that goal.

Instructions

1. Identify the educational standards you wish to teach with your activity. For example, your goal for a specific activity might be to identify or apply a synonym or antonym of a word used in a text.

2. Assess all materials with which you and your students can work. These can range from the most basic pencil and paper to more technical equipment such as computers, calculators or digital recorders.

3. Select the materials which are most appropriate to use in your class's effort to reach the previously identified educational standard. In the case of identifying synonyms and antonyms, you would likely need some sort of recording device (pen, pencil, computer), a block of text and a thesaurus.

4. Determine the timing of the activity. Include time for a warm-up exercise and a reflective self-assessment. The timing of your activity will depend upon how long the class meets and how much of that meeting time the activity will take up. For example, you might need only 15 minutes of a 50-minute class period to come up with a list of five synonyms and five antonyms for the word "angry."

5. Sequence the steps of the activity so that they fit within the allotted time you've set aside for the activity. Include sequencing elements such as a brief introduction to the standard the activity works toward, an introduction to the activity itself, completion of the activity, discussion of the activity and reflection on the activity.

6. Differentiate the activity for students working at different levels by offering enrichment to excelling students and remediation to struggling students. Examples of enriched activities include self-directed advancing and extending research activities, leading peer review groups and teaching sections of the lesson. Examples of remediated activities include teacher-to-student conferencing, student-to-student tutoring and extended time to complete lesson activities.

Tips & Warnings

• Identifying the availability of a material does not necessitate your using of that material. That is, just because you have access to a computer, doesn't mean you need to use the computer in your engineered activity.

References

• "Understanding By Design"; Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe; 2001
• Pennsylvania Department of Education: Standards