second area that comprises this book is consolidating learning. Like launching learning, this is a critical aspect of the classroom. It’s important for educators to motivate students and get them hooked, but educators also need to help students create opportunities to make connections and see relationships between ideas, concepts, and skills. Most often, students consolidate their learning with other students, which is why we are such strong proponents of collaborative learning. When students work together, interacting with each other, using academic language (especially argumentation), they are much more likely to actually remember their learning. It’s not just that they have a chance to apply the information, which they do. It’s more than that. Tasks that allow students to consolidate learning provide an opportunity to hear the thinking of others and to clarify their own thinking.
What we appreciate about, and think is unique about, this book is that McNeece profiles several types of students and shows how launching and consolidating tasks invite those students into learning; or to use the language introduced earlier, to engage. Yes, there are any number of tools useful in inviting students into learning and for helping them practice and apply their skills, but then some students are left behind and then blamed for not learning when their teachers use the tools too generically. Rather than simply say that learning is differentiated, McNeece shows how to ensure that students commit to their learning, and become engrossed, absorbed, and captivated by the experiences they have in class. We know that you will enjoy visiting the classrooms that McNeece profiles and accessing multiple strategies that we can all apply in our own classrooms and schools. Enjoy!
Introduction
How do educators help all students learn at high levels? By engaging them. I want to help you develop practices that help your students engage meaningfully with what they are learning, so they feel positive about school, are motivated, and can self-regulate. I offer prompts and anecdotes to encourage you, teachers and administrators for grades preK–12 (especially those newer to the profession), to consider what engaging classroom instruction looks like for students with different mindsets and different needs. I deconstruct student engagement’s complexity and offer strategies for reaching these students, because engagement is more than just student compliance and attentiveness. Educators can influence and, most importantly, grow a student’s engagement.
In the introduction, I will explain this book’s underpinning, which is Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey’s (2015) Unstoppable Learning model. I then drill down into the model’s concepts of launching and consolidating learning, which is about growing student engagement through transforming what we do in the classroom. I explain what I think are the most common student engagement mindsets, the student engagement mindset continuum, and how educators can best apply what I offer about them. I also warn readers how not to apply that information. Finally, before diving into the substantial content, I overview what’s in the book.
This Book’s Underpinning
Fisher and Frey have been instrumental in helping educators around the world gain the skills to be great teachers. In their book Unstoppable Learning: Seven Essential Elements to Unleash Student Potential, Fisher and Frey (2015) describe seven elements of teaching and learning: (1) planning, (2) launching, (3) consolidating, (4) assessing, (5) adapting, (6) managing, and (7) leading. You can see how they relate in figure I.1 (page 2). All these elements are critical parts of the whole. In this book, I assume you have read Fisher and Frey’s (2015) Unstoppable Learning and dive deeper, describing launching and consolidating in more depth; other books in this series dive into the remaining Unstoppable Learning elements (Hierck & Freese, 2018; Sammons & Smith, 2017; Stinson, 2017; Zapata & Brooks, 2017).
Source: Adapted from Fisher & Frey, 2015.
Figure I.1: Unstoppable Learning systems thinking model.
An important component of this model is a systems thinking approach. That approach to teaching and learning is what Launching and Consolidating Unstoppable Learning is built on. In a systems thinking approach, all the elements influence the whole concept of Unstoppable Learning. Four overlaying principles bind a systems thinking classroom: (1) relationships, (2) communication, (3) responsiveness, and (4) sustainability.
Relationship building between a teacher and students, and students with each other, is critical. In fact, a close, trusting relationship with a teacher, paired with high-quality instruction from that teacher, improves students’ academic and social development (Rimm-Kaufman & Sandilos, n.d.). Learning the proper verbal and nonverbal communication is the next critical principle for all learning’s participants, including, of course, teacher and students. Students report that their engagement fluctuates in accordance, partially, with whether teachers communicate with them (Cothran & Ennis, 2000).
Teachers who reflect on students’ changing needs are responsive. Educator and author Stephen D. Brookfield (2006) insists that responsiveness is crucial to building trust, which of course, loops back to relationship building. The strategies for each mindset demonstrate responsiveness, since you are responding to each kind of student’s particular needs, and that can occur only after you have established a relationship and have communicated with your students. The book’s last chapter addresses how to make this engaging instruction sustainable.
The final principle, sustainability, is collaboration. Without the support of a team, classrooms can, through a teacher’s hard work, make extraordinary academic gains. The problem with that is that when teachers move on, students lose those academic gains. Additionally, those successes are isolated to those particular classrooms without the ability to share ideas and practices to help all teachers grow.
Fisher and Frey (2015) propose driving questions that help keep educators focused on employing systems thinking. Systems-thinking questions for launching include:
• “What mental models do I use?
• What patterns and changes over time am I noticing?
• What assumptions of my own do I need to challenge?” (p. 174)
Systems-thinking questions for consolidating include:
• “What are the causes and effects of classroom issues I have identified?
• What is the impact of time on these issues?” (p. 175)
I cannot express enough the importance of teachers using the driving questions Fisher and Frey (2015) guide us with. They are the key to reflection and are critical to you when reading this book. Later in the book, I will provide a different mental model for student engagement based on the behaviors that I witnessed as a teacher and principal, and that you can read about in research. The driving questions are there to challenge your assumptions about students and their level of engagement in your classroom. They are there to help you launch the learning in your classroom. Furthermore, the questions for consolidating learning exist to help you critically reflect on what you are doing while you teach. John Hattie (2012) reminds us to “know thy impact.” What you do in your classroom is what matters the most. You have the biggest impact on student engagement. Use those systems-thinking questions and the content in this book to help make a great impact.
What It Means to Launch and Consolidate Learning
Launching and consolidating learning are elements of classroom instruction and, when done well, increase student engagement. You can think of both as a dinner metaphor. Launching learning is about preparing for a
