31 effective student engagement strategies

Are you struggling to find effective student engagement strategies for the classroom that are easy to implement and actually work? This is the list for you!

I love that you are here because it already tells me a lot about you.

Firstly, that you love your students and want them to succeed. 

Secondly, that you are willing to take the time to learn and improve your teaching practice. 

Both of these are such admirable traits to have as a teacher and I am so thrilled to be on this journey with you.

So grab a coffee and relax while we explore effective student engagement strategies together!

Disclaimer: This blog post, ’31 effective student engagement strategies’, may contain affiliate links. This means I may receive a small commission on qualifying purchases. This is of no extra cost to you and it helps me to continue writing awesome content for you! Read full disclaimer here. 

These days keeping students attention seems to be more and more difficult. David Sousa (2015) says this is because they have become accustomed to task switching due to the overuse of technology and constantly having multiple demands for their attention. I have definitely seen this to be true in my own classroom.

So how do we keep students engaged in the classroom? 

Here are 31 of my favourite effective student engagement strategies for your classroom:

31 effective student engagement strategies for the classroom

1. Engage with your students 

Students will engage with teachers who engage with them on a personal level. They want to talk with you, laugh with you and learn alongside you. It is important for you to build positive relationships with your students. This will also help you to gain an insight into their personal likes and hobbies. This could also give you the opportunity to bring in some of those topics into your classroom. 

This is number one on my list of effective student engagement strategies because it also has a plethora of other benefits. It builds student respect, helps maintain a positive learning environment, reduces classroom management issues, and makes teaching more enjoyable!

2. Provide choice

Providing students with choice allows them to take ownership over their own learning. 

This could be chosen as a whole class or individual. This doesn’t mean you are planning 5 different lessons for them to choose from. It could be as simple as providing them a choice as to where they complete their work or who they complete their work with. It could be that students can choose whether they write out notes or take a photo and create an A4 summary page for the notes. It could be choosing between two digital options – Kahoot or Quizlet. For more ideas on how to provide choice in class see my blog post on differentiation strategies.

3. Provide a learning intention to set their brain on the path for learning

If students can’t work out quickly what it is they are meant to be learning then their brain will switch off. Providing students with a clear learning goal for the lesson helps their brain to identify it as important and adjust their focus. These are most effective if you refer back to them during the lesson to help students make links between what they are doing and what they are meant to be learning.

4. Provide success criteria

Success criteria allow students to see their own learning progress towards the learning intention or learning goal. As they see the progress they are more likely to continue being engaged. 

5. Meet the students’ needs in terms of difficulty

If you are setting work too hard or too easy for students they will quickly lose interest. This relies on you knowing your students. But it also could be as simple as having a few easy differentiation strategies up your sleeve to easily implement at any moment.

This list of 53 EASY differentiation strategies is a must read and will give you even more ideas for effective student engagement strategies!

6. Provide opportunities for movement

Having the students get up out of their seats and move around increases the flow of oxygen to the brain and therefore allows for higher levels of thinking and concentration. Here are some easy ways to incorporate movement into your classroom.

7. Use brain breaks

Brain breaks allow for students to relax their brain for a few minutes to allow them to be able to return to full concentration. The best brain breaks allow for movement or peer-to-peer discussion.

For practical ways to do this in the classroom read my blog post here.

8. Pay attention to the ‘concentration curve’

Your students’ attention span is approximately their age in minutes. So if you are teaching 15-year-olds, they have about 15 minutes of concentration before their brain needs a break. Provide task changes or brain breaks BEFORE they hit the 15-minute mark to keep your students attention. This needs to happen at multiple intervals during the lesson. 

Understanding how our students’ brains work is essential when trying to implement effective student engagement strategies in our classroom.

impact of effective student engagement strategies

9. Group & collaborative work

Students are always more engaged when they have a group to work with. This could include small group work or paired work. Collaboration is a key ingredient for effective student engagement strategies. 

10. Allow students to peer mark

Peer marking can be a powerful tool to increase student engagement as students get the opportunity to see their peers work. The benefits are twofold. Firstly, when students know their peers will be looking at their work they tend to put more of an effort in to ensure they aren’t embarrassed. Secondly, when they see their peers work they self reflect on their own work in comparison. 

11. Learning games and puzzles

Board games, online games, team quizzes, etc always obtain high levels of engagement from students. 

Tarsia puzzles are one of my favourite activities and most effective student engagement strategies to incorporate into my classrooms as they are hands-on, promote collaboration, and are low prep. Just print and go! Effective student engagement strategies for teachers.

Want to make your own? Enter your email below and I’ll send you my template for FREE!

easy and effective student engagement strategies

12. The element of surprise

Got a cool science demonstration or experiment? Try capturing their attention with some surprise demonstration rather than telling them about it before. 

Starting a new unit? Decorate the classroom door or have them enter the classroom to a cool related song to grab their attention!

13. Digital escape rooms

So much fun and so many available. These are particularly good when reviewing or consolidating a topic. If you don’t have the time to make them yourself then you can grab some for less than the cost of a Starbucks from places like Teachers Pay Teachers or Amped Up Learning. 

To see my best selling digital escape rooms for science click here.

14. Stations activities

Stations activities are one of the easiest and most effective student engagement strategies you can use regularly in a classroom setting. 

Setting up station activities around the room has a much higher engagement rate than having students sit in their seats and just do each activity one after the other. The incorporation of movement around the room and more opportunity for collaboration means it’s a win-win!

These can also be done with minimal extra prep. Just take the activities you were going to do and put them into stations around the room with the materials they need for each station – whether it be glue and scissors for a cut and paste, colouring pencils for a colour coding activity, just an instruction card for an online quiz or video, or the worksheet you want them to complete.

It’s also helpful to add an estimated time you expect students to spend on each station.

15. Competitions 

Sometimes getting students’ competitive nature out provides excellent engagement. 

One of my favourite activities for increasing engagement while watching a video is splitting the class into teams and having them write down questions from the video as they watch. I then pause the video after each 10-minute interval and each team has a chance to ask the class one of their questions. The team that can answer correctly first wins a point. If no teams can answer then the team asking wins the point.

So simple to implement and very effective. The best of effective student engagement strategies. 

effective student engagement strategies

17. Variety in seating plans

Switching up the seating plan or the desk structure can provide new opportunities for collaboration.

18. Changing classroom displays

Has your classroom looked the same for a while now? Changing the displays or switching them up to match your current topic can help students switch their headspace into gear ready for learning.

19. Outdoor lessons

There is something so exciting to students about having outdoor lessons. Maybe it’s a novelty but on a nice day, it is so wonderful to get outside with them and do some learning together.

I’ve found that setting strict ground rules for the outdoor lesson is key, with the result of bad behaviour being the whole class has to come straight back to the classroom. This has definitely helped motivate good behaviour in this setting.

20. Team teaching with another class

Sometimes having new students and a new teacher in your class can be very exciting for your students. 

Yes, it might take some extra planning to coordinate with the other teacher, but it can also be well worth it. You could even do this a few times and alternate who plans or runs the lesson.

21. Hands-on practical learning

Try to include hands-on activities as much as possible. Students love them and it helps their retention of knowledge. Even simple things like using cordial to learn about ratios in maths can help students engage more with the content and see the application of it in real life. 

22. Cross-curricular opportunities

Can you bring in someone from the media department to learn about cameras while learning about light and lenses in physics? Can you buy some paint and use the art room to learn about ratios in mathematics? 

23. Guest teachers/visitors

Bring in an expert in the topic you are studying, whether it be an Aboriginal elder or a local scientist. These visitors can bring a wealth of knowledge and really break up the normal classroom activities

Guest speakers are excellent for effective student engagement strategies. 

24. Virtual experiences & augmented reality

The introduction of classroom devices has opened up a world of possibilities in terms of the variety of virtual opportunities available to students including virtual labs and virtual excursions.

Augmented reality can also create unique opportunities in the classroom. Try searching ‘augmented reality’ followed by your topic and see what comes up! This one is augmented reality for the periodic table.

Technology allows for so many creative options when it comes to effective student engagement strategies.

25. Jigsaw strategy 

The Jigsaw strategy increases engagement as each student becomes an ‘expert’ at one part of the topic and then has the opportunity to both teach others and learn from others. See how to use this strategy.

26. Flipped learning 

Flipped learning involves the setting of learning for homework – generally a video tutorial – so students come to class already having watched the direct instruction. This provides more class time for hands-on activities, experiments, collaborative tasks, and tackling harder problems.

The best part is that it allows for more teacher interaction during the lesson rather than using valuable time for the ‘chalk and talk’. Flipped learning for effective student engagement strategies.

27. Online quizzes 

Online quizzes such as Quizlet or Kahoot are super easy to implement in order to increase student engagement while learning key glossary terms and vocabulary. Both Quizlet and Kahoot have large banks of already produced quizzes which can save you a lot of time. They also offer different types of engagement allowing for both individual and collaborative competitions.

These types of activities are super low prep for teachers so they are always a go-to on my list of effective student engagement strategies.

Using quizzes for effective student engagement strategies.

Effective student engagement strategies for middle school.

28. Scaffolded notes

Scaffolded notes that also allow for some colouring-in and ‘doodling’ on the page can help students focus their thoughts and processing of new information while also creating visually appealing sets of notes for later study.

29. Create classroom displays

Have students create something that can be used to decorate the classroom – posters, displays, hanging work, etc. Knowing their work will be displayed can encourage them to put that extra bit of effort in.

30. Make it 3D

There is something about making an A4-page 3D that excites students. These could be as simple as notes that fold into cubes or prisms.

31. Use a variety of activities

Try to use a variety of the above activities and strategies often. Students like variety and it keeps things exciting in the classroom.

Effective student engagement strategies: Conclusion

While I love all of these strategies, don’t try them all at once or you may get overwhelmed. Choose one or two that stand out to you at first and give them a go. Then come back to try a few more. 

I hope you find these helpful in your lesson planning!

If you try any of the above effective student engagement strategies I would love to hear about it in the comments!

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