5 Steps to Increasing Engagement in Your Younger Learners

By Bel Clohesy
By Bel Clohesy
5 Steps to Increasing Engagement in Your Younger Learners

Our younger learners are unique and so is their learning style. To increase engagement and fuel their interest in learning requires a different approach. 

Any online learning environment needs to take into account the needs of our younger learners and ensure they get the most out of the classroom and beyond. To do this, capturing and sharing learning moments is crucial. A learning moment could be anything from drawing a dinosaur to reciting timetables.

Anna Pasichnyk/Shutterstock.com

Schoolbox, an all-in-one learning management system (LMS), community portal and engagement platform possesses features specifically to meet the needs of our younger learners.

In this blog, you will discover how to increase engagement in your younger learners in 5 simple steps.

Step 1: Create Learning Moment

First and foremost, before you can think about increasing engagement, younger learners need opportunities for learning moments to be created. This may take the form of enabling your learners to fuel their creativity through writing, drawing or drama. Consider allowing your students to share their learning by recording themselves reading or explaining a mathematical solution. 

By creating learning moments, you and your students can share and reflect, leading to greater engagement in the classroom. Learning moments also provide empowerment within your students from an early age, so they can develop the skills to become independent learners.

Step 2: Capture Learning Moment

By creating a learning moment, it is then possible to capture it so that the learning moment can be shared and not forgotten. With younger learners, it is essential to provide them with the opportunity to reflect on their learning and be proud of their achievements. This alone can increase engagement and allow the students to maintain interest in their learning. 

Schoolbox is a great enabler for this. Schoolbox has designed a function specifically to address this challenge and ensure that learning moments are kept at the forefront of the mind and built upon day after day.

Using the “Share Learning” function on the dashboard, students can quickly capture their own learning. Once students choose to share their work, they will then be provided with further options to capture the learning moment.

Students can choose whether to capture via photo, video, audio or something else. We have carefully designed the function so that students are able to find the most suitable method to capture the learning moment and not feel limited. After all, learning moments can take many different forms.

Step 3: Share Learning Moment

Sharing learning moments is the next step in increasing engagement in your younger learners. By sharing these moments, students are able to interact with their parents and teachers and enhance the positive aspects of their learning journey. 

This level of collaboration heightens interest within your students and drives their learning forward as they not only share their own learning moment but also be provided feedback and comments from their school community.

In Schoolbox, each learning moment that is captured can be shared by the student directly, empowering them to take ownership of their learning.

Step 4: Engage with School Community on Learning Moment 

Once a learning moment is shared, the full impact of it can only be realised if the entire school community is engaged in the experience. 

So, the next step to increasing engagement in our younger learners is to engage the school community. In Schoolbox, this engagement is achieved by enabling teachers, parents and the students themselves to comment on each learning moment.

Learning moment appears on Activity Feed

Engagement from the school community provides students the comfort and confidence to explore their knowledge further. Seeing their parents and teachers interested in their learning also instils a lifelong love of learning in your younger students. 

Step 5: Repeat and Evolve  

Doing something once is never enough. And so is the case with learning moments. To enrich the learning experience for your students and increase engagement, it’s important to share many learning moments.

This is where you must encourage continuation of learning moments. Not only will your students share their learning moments but they will also evolve, over time, in their learning method, structure and knowledge. Imagine the rich learning opportunities when a student can view the draft of their writing piece and then share the finished product with their families.

Schoolbox for younger learners

Keeping learning moments at the core, Schoolbox has designed an experience that ensures the unique needs of primary students are not forgotten. There are certain aspects that cannot be compromised when delivering an engaging educational experience. 

And, we have much more to offer our younger learners. Speak to a Education Consultant today and see how Schoolbox can increase engagement for your younger learners.

Bel Clohesy has been a teacher for over 17 years, with expertise in teaching students from Kindergarten to Year 8. With a strong foundation in digital technology, Bel’s priority is ensuring an enhanced teaching and learning experience for K–12 schools.