If you listened last week to Carmen and Stephen’s reflection about using the TeachFX tool, you may have noticed a big theme they both highlighted was “mindfulness” — being more aware of how much your students are talking is a great way to make sure you’re giving them plenty of chances to get verbally engaged.

This week I thought I’d share with you the results from the pilot study we conducted on the TeachFX tool, and how using the tool impacted student engagement. The results were pretty dramatic!

Teachers who used TeachFX for just 5 weeks increased their student participation by an average of 12.6 minutes per class. And this result held for teachers who continued using the tool throughout the school year. That’s 42 more hours of students interacting with each other, expressing their questions and ideas, and engaging in conversation…in a single class! If you’re interested, check out the full report here.

How did awareness drive such major changes in student engagement? Here’s what the teachers said…

Lesson planning:

“I changed my unit plan to add in more days where we did group work.”

“TeachFX of course influenced my decision to plan a lesson with more open-ended prompts for student discussion.”

In-the-moment interactions with students:

“It makes me more aware. I’m more likely to ask ‘why do you think?’ than to just answer a student’s question.”

“Every time a student speaks up now, I think about wait time and letting them build on each other’s ideas.”

Pretty cool, huh? Do you want to see these kinds of changes in your classroom, in your school, or your district? Drop me a line at jamie@teachfx.com and we can find a time to chat!​