This book is a highly practical guide for early childhood teachers using five research-based strategies for improving class-wide engagement.This practical manual for early childhood teachers introduces five strategies for improving class-wide engagement. The amount of time that children spend involved with adults, peers, or materials is critical to real learning in the classroom, and children's levels of active engagement have been found to be highly related to success and positive outcomes.The first classroom engagement or engagement strategy, Zone Defense Scheduling, is a way of organizing classroom staff so that child engagement is promoted rather than lost during routines and transitions between activities. The second strategy, Incidental Teaching, is a method for helping children to expand their engagement over time or their level of sophistication toward a developmental goal. The third strategy, Data Collection, helps teachers to focus on engagement during each routine of the day while tracking what is happening. The last two strategies are Writing Functional Classroom Goals, and Integrating Therapy into Classroom Routines. The book provides explanations of each strategy, as well as instructions for implementation, practical examples, and performance checklists.This book developed out of a federally funded research project called Improving Engagements in Preschoolers with Disabilities and has been used extensively in early childhood classrooms.
