Active Engagement in the Classroom

Active Engagement in a classroom I have come to learn is a very important thing. Mrs. Bennett in our classroom does several hands on activities, and has the kids working together on many different occasions. Still one of my favorite things in her classroom, is our class mail box. I may have mentioned this before, but it is only because it is my favorite thing we do as a class. The students each write 1 letter each week to another student in the class. They put the letter in the mail box, and we hand out the letters at the end of the week. They have to write to each student at least, once, so everyone gets a letter from every student in the class by the end of the school year. This is a way for the kids to be engaged with their classmates, and make friends.
In our classroom, we do a warm up and cool down song/dance/interactive video that we do together every once in a while with the students. It is such a fun activity and we have a great time doing it together. Within the first few weeks, the kids knew all of the words to the songs, and had memorized the moves. It is an easy and simple way to have a fun interaction with your students, and helps to wake up their brains when they come to school. It is a nice cool down before we send them home, and makes our class very calm before we leave. Singing a song, learning a new nursery rhyme or fable with puppets, these are both very great ways that we have interacted with our class. It helps engage the student in the lesson, and they always seem to remember it better, if we make it something memorable to them.