Opportunities to Respond: A Proven Approach to Student Engagement

By Anne Marie Jordan, Intervention Specialist

As I complete my thirty-fourth year in public education, I often have adults ask me if students have changed, if teaching is harder, and if families are not doing enough to support teachers and schools. As educators, we continuously hear that we must have classroom management and engaged students. For me, those oft-asked questions are a direct indication of whether teachers can (or cannot) effectively manage a classroom and whether students choose (or choose not) to engage in their learning. The two are inextricably linked for me.

When I mentor a new teacher — especially a person entering education as a new teacher without the traditional path of coursework, internships, student teaching, and holding teacher certification — my advice always starts with how easy it is to manage students if they are engaged in their learning. What I mean is that invested students manage themselves! Let me explain how I do that with my learners.

Invested Students Manage Themselves

When I walk into classrooms each day and I see students who are not engaged in their learning, I have noticed that they have often found other ways to occupy their time off-task. These students require effective strategies to help with classroom management because those behaviors might be loud, inappropriate, or just quietly disengaged. Yet, I rarely see those students in the same light when they are working with me. So I am asked by reflective teachers what am I doing that they are not doing. It comes down to a few simple, research-based strategies that will work for anyone in any subject by giving them opportunities to respond.

Opportunities to Respond

An opportunity to respond is a researched strategy that elicits a response from students (individually, small, or whole group) in a way that allows for multiple ways to answer or share their answers and opinions. This can be done with verbal responses or non-verbal responses (Clarke, Haydon, Bauer & Epperly 2016; Common, Lane, Cantwell, Brunsting, Oakes, Germer, & Bross, 2020; Fitzgerald Leahy, Miller, & Schardt, 2019; MacSuga-Gage & Simonsen, 2015).

Using opportunities to respond (OTR) includes strategies for presenting materials, asking questions, and correcting students’ answers to increase the likelihood of an active and desired response. It addresses the number of times the teacher provides academic requests that require students to actively respond. Teacher behavior prompts or solicits a student response (verbal, written, gesture). One area to check on as a teacher is how much time is spent on teacher talk during instructional time. Teacher talk should be no more than 40% of the instructional block. It makes sense when you think about who is active during talking — the speaker — and who is passive during the talking — the listener. As adults, often the same things that engage us will also engage our students. Conversely, that works for things that disengage us as adults, too.

Verbal Opportunities to Respond

A verbal OTR solicits a response out loud in response to a teacher prompt or question. It might look like this:

• Choral Responding
• Shoulder Partners/Turn and Talk
• 4 Corners
• Bridge Partners

Verbal responding to increase engagement can also include the use of random ways of calling on students by pulling names on popsicle sticks out of a can or using a digital spinner with student names on it. For students sensitive to being randomly called on, students can choose assistance from a friend or codes might be added to the name such as a color, animal name, etc. Keeping an anchor chart of all “red” students or all “tigers” provides a group for the shy student to phone a friend for assistance. Similarly, tables can be coded during cooperative work.

Non-verbal Opportunities to Respond

A non-verbal OTR solicits a response individually, often as a check of learning. It might look like:

• First to Five (indicating levels of understanding or comfort using 0–5)
• Responding on a small whiteboard and holding it up
• Thumbs up/Thumbs Down
• Stand up/Sit down
• Digital: Kahoot, Pear Deck, Survey Response

Providing students with a guided note or graphic organizer to fill in key ideas and details planned during a teacher-led talk allows students to focus their attention on what to listen to and helps students take notes. These may be used along with an exit ticket at the end of the learning to help gauge individual understanding.

Guidelines for Responding

According to Reinke, Herman, and Stormant (2013), reviewing previously learned materials should elicit 8–12 responses per minute with 90% accuracy. For new material, a minimum of 4–6 responses per minute with 80% accuracy should be expected. Both verbal and non-verbal responses can be used for review or new learning. Students will be most successful learning and practicing each way of responding early in the school year on fun, non-academic material, and it is a great way to build community and learn about each other. It will then be more effective to move the techniques into academic learning.

Use Specific Praise

Simply praising students by saying “good job” or “try again” can feel like being a positive influence, but becoming more specific with your praise can help students know what they did that was good or how to try again. Here are some examples: Johnston (2004) helps shine a light on how small nuances in our teacher language can raise the self-confidence and self-efficacy of students by changing our word choices. Students who feel successful and have a growth mindset cultivated in their classroom are more engaged in their learning and increase their achievement levels.

• To make “good job” more specific: “You worked that problem through until you got an answer and then checked with your partner. You really stuck with it!”
• To make “try again” more specific: “You are almost there, think about this part here____ and you could try ____.”
• To make “you’re so smart” not feel like the opposite is being “not smart” you could say, “Congratulations You got that problem solved! You are in charge of your learning.”
• Try changing “I am proud of you” to “You should feel proud of yourself for ____.”

By using Opportunities to Respond in your classroom and coupling it with specific praise, you will have mischief managed in no time at all!

Anne Marie Jordan has proudly been in public education for almost 35 years as a classroom teacher, principal, and Literacy and Intervention specialist in Dexter, Maine. A lifelong learner, she has collected degrees along her journey to best help teachers and students and recently completed her PhD in Education in Prevention and Intervention Studies. She works as a consultant for the Maine Department of Education coaching schools in Positive Behavior Interventions and Support. She is grateful to the students, families, and teachers she meets every day who make her a stronger educator and mentor.

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