Easy Student Engagement: Name Dropping

February 17th, 2010 By: Diane Trim in Articles, Classroom Management, Teaching Strategies

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This teaching tip is courtesy of the junk mail that piles up on my kitchen table. When the pile gets too large to ignore, I sort through it and toss uninteresting junk mail in the trash.

My husband asks me why I don’t just throw it all away.

Well, some catalogs I might be able to cut up to use as conversation starters or metaphors in class. Some flyers I might be able to use in my mass media class to teach a persuasive print advertising technique.

And let’s face it: I like the pieces that call me by name.

I know it’s a trap before I open the envelope, but I respond better to the junk mail with my name on it rather than resident or valued customer.

Students are the same way.

When I taught, I tried hard not to lecture for most of the class period. But, we all know that the lecture, even a short lecture, is inevitable. Here’s how I ran mine:

Guided note taking. I gave students an outline for their notes so they could anticipate what was important and what topics we’d cover.

Student involvement. I had a designated note taker at the board or overhead projector who wrote the notes for the class. That freed me up to circulate among the students and make sure they were on task and that I was available for questions. I also had the designated name picker choose volunteers to answer questions from a deck of name cards.

Name dropping. This is the smartest thing I’ve done to help kids pay attention during a lecture. As I mentioned, it’s inspired from my junk mail. As often as possible, I tried to incorporate a student’s name into an example during my lecture. I didn’t choose someone who was nodding off or doodling instead of listening. I spread the joy around and tried to name each kid in the class during the lecture at least once.

If the student name didn’t work well in an example, I worked it in like I was having a one-on-one conversation with individual students. It went like this:

“So, Jonah, we’re not really sure if it was Shakespeare who wrote these plays or if someone else did it. But that’s not really important, right Jenny? The words by any pen would still be terrific, don’t you think, Lisa?”

That example might be overdoing it, but just saying those student names at random during the lecture and making eye contact with each kid really helped them pay attention. We all love it when someone calls us by name.

It’s just like how those colorful mailers get my attention when they print my name on the envelope: Diane Trim, you could be our next winner!

Name dropping like that is hard to ignore.

Tags: Teaching Strategies

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