An article by Richard James Rogers
Illustrations by Pop Sutthiya Lertyongphati
In this first of a three-week, three-part series, we’ll be investigating how outstanding teachers keep their students on-task, entertained and engaged every single lesson.
This week, we’ll be focusing on two key areas of active engagement:
- The personality traits and pedagogical attributes that are shared by all outstanding educators
- The importance that a prompt lesson start has on engaging your learners, along with the best ways to implement this, practically.
For many of us, the end of the academic year is approaching, and many students will be in ‘let’s slack off’ mode right now. As teachers, we need to be more vigilant than any other time in the year right now, particularly with regards to lesson planning and keeping our students on task.
The following extracts come from the Active Engagement chapter of my debut book: The Quick Guide to Classroom Management. I hope the information is useful to you, and don’t forget: we welcome your comments with open-arms! If you’d like to share your thoughts with us then please do comment using the comments box at the bottom of the page.

Are you keeping your students engaged all year-round?
Author note: You may wish to supplement your knowledge of starter activities by reading our beautifully illustrated (and most popular blog post ever!): 7 Starter Activities for PGCE Students and Newly Qualified Teachers.
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