ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the research about student engagement and shows how teachers can put it to use in the 1:1 classroom: Students report higher levels of engagement when they have caring teachers who create active learning opportunities. A 1:1 classroom is an excellent way to facilitate engagement, because it places three key conditions—connection, perplexity, and curiosity—within reach for every student. Teachers can use digital tools to create connections for their students within the classroom and beyond while simultaneously teaching the etiquette of written communication. They can create their own interactive texts or download e-books with interactive aspects; many are free or low cost. They have also been using collaborative reading tools such as Actively Learn to engage students in reading both short and novel-length texts. Through the chat window built into every Google Doc, students can “discuss” the text one section at a time and add margin notes about the meaning.
