How JMS Builds Student Engagement in the Classroom

Jakarta Multicultural School seeks to instil a love of learning in the students that enter its warm halls. We foster this love of learning by getting students engaged with the lesson. This is done in a variety of ways, and we will now look at some of these below.

Ask Open-Ended Questions

One of the most common techniques used by our teachers to encourage student participation is to ask open ended questions. These are asked throughout the lesson, inquiring about previous learning among other things. According to Paula Denton, open-ended questions allow teachers to build upon what the students already know, getting them to think more. This can be used to help students reach a conclusion themselves, making the information more likely to be retained as it would be seen as theirs, and no one else’s. As you can see, open-ended questions are a very important tool in the classroom.

Encourage Students to Present and Share Work Regularly

Classes at JMS are full of presentations and opportunities to share work with fellow classmates. These not only serve to help students build up their confidence to speak and to give advice to others, but it also keeps students accountable for their work. In an online article Nine Parrish, author of The Independent Learner, states that students feel more confident in a structured and goal orientated classroom. Having presentations or knowing your friend will look at your work gives students a clear product they need to produce during the time allocated. Presenting and sharing work on a regular basis has multiple benefits in the learning experience.

Use Group Work and Collaboration

Like many schools around the world, JMS utilizes collaborative learning, the practice of working together with others to learn new things and complete learning tasks. Jingjing Sun et al, in a paper submitted to Contemporary Educational Psychology, found that children were more engaged talking with fellow students during structured collaborative group activities. In these group discussions the students take some of the responsibility for the learning process. This gives space for students to more freely share ideas and to help each other if needed, which as stated earlier this increases confidence. Clearly collaborative learning has a place in every classroom.

Give and Receive Feedback

Feedback is important everywhere, including the classroom. JMS teachers not only give constructive feedback to students, but seek out feedback from fellow teachers and their own students, which allows students and teachers to improve. Going back to Nine Parrish, students are more confident in an environment where they feel like the teacher cares about them and is a partner in learning. This feeling is earned by giving personalised ideas about how they can improve and showing that the teacher themselves wants to improve and values the ideas of the student. This makes feedback one of the major pillars of an engaging learning experience.

As we have shown, Jakarta Multicultural School fosters engagement in the classroom through various techniques.

Reference List

Paula Denton, Chapter 3 “Open Ended Questions”, The Power of Our Words: Teacher Language That Helps Children Learn, https://books.google.co.id/books?id=D3sdAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA12&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false

Nina Parrish, To Increase Student Engagement, Focus on Motivation [17/11/2022], Edutopia, https://www.edutopia.org/article/to-increase-student-engagement-focus-on-motivation/

Jingjing Sun, Richard C. Anderson, Tzu-Jung Lin, Joshua A. Morris, Brian W. Miller, Shufeng Ma, Kim Thi Nguyen-Jahiel, Theresa Scott, “Children’s engagement during collaborative learning and direct instruction through the lens of participant structure”, Contemporary Educational Psychology, Volume 69, 2022, 102061, ISSN 0361-476X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2022.102061. [Viewed on sciencedirect.com]