Keep Students’ Attention in the Classroom

Grab students’ attention as or BEFORE they walk in your door!

Variety is one key to keeping students engaged. I’ve used these ideas and activities successfully over the years.

There are 35+ activities specifically designed to gain and keep students’ attention in the music classroom.

The activities are divided into the following THREE categories:

1. BEGIN your music lessons: 17 ideas are perfect as lesson starters.
2. REINFORCE understanding of lesson/topic content during the lesson: I’ve included 13 suggestions that work well as review activities
3. FINISH your music lessons: 5 different ideas for rounding up your lesson and checking for understanding.

These activities work well because they:

• Provide opportunities for students to review and clarify their learning for the lesson.
• Allow and encourage reflection on what has been learned, and finally, they
• Provide a variety of strategies for you, the teacher: using varied strategies rather than a repeated routine helps keep your students engaged.

To conclude, here is one I like to use with my students:

• Have THREE ‘answers’ displayed for students to see. These could be music words, phrases, notes or other signs/symbols.
• Written under the words/music sign or symbol is ‘what is the question?’
• Ask students to give one possible question for each of the THREE given ‘answers’.                                                                                                                            

This strategy is excellent for a quick review of concepts or vocabulary taught during the lesson or in previous lessons. Student engagement will be higher and behavior issues lower due to incorporating activities such as these into your lessons. 

To preview this resource, CLICK the image below!

Also, look at the Tips to Gain Students’ Attention blog post.

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