25 Strategies to Increase Student Engagement

What Are Student Engagement Strategies?

Student engagement strategies are instructional techniques designed to actively involve students in the learning process. These strategies aren’t simply traditional, old-school engagement strategies. These are modern ways of fostering participation, collaboration, and critical thinking; even with our toughest students. 

Engagement strategies are very important tools that all teachers need in order to maximize student learning in the classroom environment and improve student performance.

Why Do We Need Student Engagement Strategies?

Without engagement strategies, students can become passive learners and struggle to connect with the subject matter. Put plainly, they simply won’t be participating as much as they should be! 

This can lead to lower comprehension of the material, decreased motivation, and higher rates of disengagement. When students aren’t actively involved, they also get more distracted, and disruptive behavior becomes a bigger problem, making it harder to maintain a supportive environment.

By engaging students, teachers can help them better connect with the lesson material. This is how we move students toward greater understanding, retention, better behavior, and more capable problem-solving skills. Effective strategies contribute to students’ emotional engagement and behavioral engagement, as well, which helps them feel a sense of community within the classroom environment.

We all know engagement is essential for creating a positive and effective learning environment. That without it, students can become passive, disinterested, or even disruptive. 

We don’t just use these strategies to keep kids looking at us, we use them to also promote:

Deeper Understanding 

When students interact with learning material in a meaningful way, they retain information better and develop stronger critical thinking skills. It’s also important for kids to have fun while learning. This leads to greater understanding and being able to show knowledge across settings. 

Motivation 

Engaged students are more likely to take ownership of their own learning, stay curious, and persist through challenges. We want students to build perseverance in their learning journeys! While learning can be very difficult, require a lot of energy and focus, it should also be fun and desirable. It’s our job to help students become motivated to want to stay learning in the first place.

Collaboration 

Many engagement strategies encourage group work and communication, essential skills for both academic and real-world success. It’s easy to forget that we want our students to transfer skills out of the classroom, but collaborating with other people is a skill that will serve our students well into adulthood. The more we can build in strategies with collaboration in mind, the more we offer students a chance to gain leadership skills, as well as social skills, in addition to lesson objectives.

Equity 

Using a variety of strategies is important so that all students, regardless of their learning styles or abilities, have opportunities to participate and succeed. We want to make sure we give every student ways to acquire and showcase their knowledge. Being strategic in how we’re ensuring all students are thought of and represented in our tactics is incredibly important. Students must feel like the activities and materials we provide them are available to them.

In short, these strategies not only improve academic success but also enhance students’ overall classroom experience, making them active participants in their own learning journey. 

What Makes Good Strategies Work?

You can have the best strategies, but if you don’t incorporate some key elements into your delivery, they just won’t work! We’ve all been there with a perfectly planned lesson, a fun activity, and we’re sure it’s going to be a hit, only to have it flop. It’s not that your lesson or your strategy wasn’t good enough, it may be that you forgot a few key pieces to make sure they were successful.

Here are some things you can do to make sure your strategies work.

Successful student engagement strategies share key qualities that contribute to student learning. For starters, having a clear purpose ensures students grasp how activities fit into the learning process. Giving them clear expectations is so important in their ability to be successful. We want our strategies to promote active participation, behavioral engagement, and cognitive engagement. Students need to be invested and involved!

We talked about equity being important, but we also want variety through different strategies to maintain interest across grade levels and subjects. On that same note, our lessons and the strategies we use should be relevant. Relevancy ties strategies to the subject matter and provides real-world applications, making learning experiences meaningful. 

Another hugely important piece of the puzzle: flexibility. Remaining flexible helps us adapt our approach for different grade levels and class dynamics year after year (or month after month, if you know what I mean!).

Lastly, the best strategies create a supportive environment where students can explore ideas, make mistakes, and grow. This inclusive learning environment enhances critical thinking, collaboration, and student motivation, leading to academic success and personal growth.

Bonus: The best strategies foster a safe, inclusive learning environment for students to share ideas, make mistakes, and explore new concepts without fear of judgment.

Now that we know what to focus on with our strategies, let’s get down to exactly what strategies are the best for actively engaging your students. The 20 strategies below can be implemented in many different ways, across ages, developmental abilities, and more. They are flexible enough to be utilized in various disciplines, as well.

Print this list out and tape it in your planner, or copy and paste the list for your digital planner so you can keep giving these awesome strategies a try in your classroom.

The best student engagement strategies

Here are some tried-and-true engagement strategies to add to your teaching toolkit. 

1. Four Corners: Pose a question with multiple-choice answers, and assign each corner of the room to an answer. Students move to the corner representing their choice, sparking group discussions and collaborative learning.

2. Turn and Talk: Students pair up to discuss a question or idea. This quick strategy fosters peer-to-peer learning and ensures everyone gets a chance to speak, promoting active participation and active listening.

3. Guided Notes: Provide a partially completed set of notes for students to fill in during the lesson. This keeps them actively engaged while focusing on key points and improving comprehension of the course material.

4. Offering Choices for Work: Giving students options empowers them to take ownership of their learning. For example:

1. Choose between writing a story or creating a comic strip to demonstrate understanding.
2. Pick a research topic that aligns with their students’ interests.
3. Decide whether to work individually or in a small group.
4. The ideas here are endless!

5. Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down: Ask yes/no or agree/disagree questions, and have students respond with a simple thumbs-up or thumbs-down. It’s a simple way to gauge understanding or opinions.

6. Response Cards: Use tools like sticky notes, index cards, or mini whiteboards for students to jot down answers or reactions. For example, they can write a one-word summary of a lesson or a question they still have.

7. Choral Responding: For simple answers, have the entire class respond in unison. This strategy keeps energy high and allows for immediate feedback.

8. Inside-Outside Circles: Students form two circles—one inside and one outside. They face a partner to discuss a question, then rotate to engage with new partners. This is a great way to incorporate movement into the classroom activities and encourage student interactions.

9. Jigsaw: Divide the class into small groups, assigning each group a portion of the material to master and teach to others. This promotes collaborative learning, student motivation, and cognitive engagement.

10. Think-Pair-Share: Students think individually about a question, pair up to discuss their thoughts, then share with the entire class.

11. Choice Boards: Provide a grid of activity options related to the course content, allowing students to choose tasks that match their interests and strengths.

12. Role-Playing: Students take on roles in scenarios related to the subject matter, encouraging active participation and deeper understanding.

13. Gamification: Incorporate game-like elements such as points, badges, or challenges into lessons to increase student motivation and engagement.

14. Interactive Polls and Quizzes: Use digital tools like Kahoot! or Google Forms for real-time assessments and to keep students engaged during class time.

15. Socratic Seminars: Encourage student-led discussions based on open-ended questions related to the course content.

16. Learning Stations: Set up different stations around the classroom, each with unique tasks or challenges for students to complete in small groups. For example, a math station with counting blocks, a reading station with books, and an art station for creativity. Students rotate through the stations, keeping them engaged and active.

17. Peer Teaching: Assign students to teach a specific concept to their classmates, reinforcing their own understanding in the process.

18 Virtual Field Trips: Use digital tools to take students on virtual tours related to the subject matter, enhancing experiential learning.

19. Exit Tickets: At the end of class, have students submit a quick response on what they learned, a question they have, or feedback on the lesson-switch up how you collect answers to keep things fresh (digital vs. paper, etc.)

20. Gallery Walks: Display student work or important content around the room for students to explore and discuss in small groups or individually.

21. Storytelling Circles: Have students take turns adding sentences to a story. Start with a simple prompt ( “Once upon a time, there was a magical forest…”) and let each student contribute a line. This encourages creativity, listening skills, and collaboration.

22. Interactive Whiteboard Games: Use an interactive whiteboard or Smartboard for fun educational games, such as matching, drawing, or solving math problems. You can create competitions or team-based challenges to keep students actively participating.

23. Classroom Jobs: Assign small responsibilities to students throughout the day, such as “line leader” or “board eraser.” This helps keep them engaged by giving them ownership and a sense of responsibility within the classroom environment.

24. Brain Breaks: Schedule short, fun movement breaks throughout the lesson. These help students release pent-up energy and stay focused when it’s time to return to learning.

25. Interactive Read-Alouds: While reading aloud, pause to ask questions or let students act out parts of the story. You can also encourage them to make predictions or describe what they think will happen next, making reading time more interactive.

Tips and Tricks for Making Engagement Strategies Work

Start small by introducing one strategy at a time to build confidence. If your students aren’t used to moving around the room, you’re probably not going to want to give them free-reign for a movement activity. You’ll want to give them plenty of guidelines and slowly give them more freedom as they learn the expectations.

It’s also important to mix things up by rotating strategies so the kids maintain interest and you can cater to different learning styles. 

Leverage digital tools such as online platforms, simulations, and videos for enhanced participation. We all know kids love technology. Use it to your advantage and get them learning something new!

Follow up with students about their likes and dislikes with how you’ve structured your strategy. Our goal is to reach students by making learning exciting. If we don’t take time to reflect on whether they liked a specific strategy or not, we’re missing a big opportunity.

As much as we want our students engaged from start to finish, they may still need some brain breaks for sustained attention. Don’t be afraid to break things up. We also want to be sure we’re encouraging inquiry-based learning with open-ended questions that promote curiosity and problem-solving. Creating a healthy mix of lesson modes and engagement strategies will keep students learning how to learn, as well as what they’re learning. 

Finally, connect lessons to the real world through case studies, projects, and guest speakers for practical application. The strategies above lend themselves very well to real-world lessons and hands-on learning. 

Challenges and Solutions

I’d love to tell you that implementing these will be seamless, but we all know that’s simply not true. While student engagement strategies are highly beneficial, you’re going to face challenges when implementing them. 

Here are some common struggles you may come across (yes, even with the best strategies)—and solutions to overcome them:

1. Challenge: Lack of Student Participation
   Solution: Start small and gradually introduce engagement strategies. Use activities that require minimal effort but still promote active participation, like turn and talk or thumbs up/thumbs down. Once students start to see that these are fun ways to participate, they’ll be more likely to get involved.
2. Challenge: Diverse Learning Styles
   Solution: Incorporate a variety of strategies, such as offering choices for work or using peer teaching. This is how we make sure that all students, regardless of their preferred learning styles, can find ways to engage and succeed.
3. Challenge: Time Constraints
   Solution: Use quick, easy-to-implement strategies like response cards or inside-outside circles that don’t take up much class time but still keep students actively engaged. Prioritize strategies that enhance learning without adding to your workload. These should not be another thing on your to-do list, they should make teaching easier!
4. Challenge: Student Distractions
   Solution: Incorporate movement and interactive elements, such as gamification or virtual field trips. These techniques help break the monotony of traditional classroom activities, keeping students focused and paying attention.
5. Challenge: Maintaining Equity
   Solution: Ensure that all students have equal opportunities to participate by tailoring strategies to address varying needs and abilities. For example, try offering visual aids or adjusting group sizes based on student needs.

When you get more proactive in addressing challenges, you can create a more engaging and inclusive learning environment for all students, with limited problems. 

When students are engaged, they not only understand the material better, but they also develop a sense of community and motivation to continue their learning journey.

But implementing these strategies isn’t always smooth sailing—there will be challenges along the way. From student distractions to diverse learning styles, it’s important to remain flexible and adjust your approach to meet the needs of all your students. 

The key is to create a classroom environment that is dynamic, inclusive, and supportive, where mistakes are viewed as opportunities to learn, and every student feels empowered to participate.

As you start integrating these strategies, remember that it’s okay to take small steps. 

Start with one or two methods, and build your confidence and your students’ engagement over time. The more you experiment and reflect on what works, the more you’ll refine your approach, making your classroom a place where students are motivated to learn, collaborate, and grow.

So, take these strategies, adapt them to your unique classroom, and watch your students not just engage, but thrive.