increasing student interest:
“Student motivation, as it turns out, appears to have as much influence on student success as teaching quality” (Goodwin & Hubbell, 2013, pg. 66).
I believe that one of the main goals for a teacher to have are to instill a love of learning in their students. We want our students to love coming to school, and looking forward to what they will learn that day. We do not want our students to dread coming to school – counting down the hours and minutes until they are “free” to go home.
So how do we keep our students engaged where we, as teachers, have expectations that we need to meet? This is where, again, understanding each students’ individual learning style is so important. If you are in tune with how each child learns, you will be able to develop lesson plans and activities that will not only challenge your students, but keep their attention as well.
As differentiated-instruction expert Carol Ann Tomlinson states, “In a sense, the teacher is continually auditioning kids in different settings—and the students get to see how they can contribute in a variety of contexts” (Tomlinson, 2013).
Larry Ferlazzo, author of Classroom Management Q&As broke down keeping students interested and engaged into 5 steps:
When I first began thinking about this discussion topic, rewards instantly came to mind. Who doesn’t like winning a prize? But as I read in The 12 Touchstones, Goodwin and Hubbell made a great point: “Rewards tend to produce short-term, but not long lasting changes in behavior” (Goodwin & Hubbell, 2013, pg. 68). This is not to say that you should never offer a reward, but I realized that we want the learning and education to be the real reward for the students – not just a prize.
I think that the most important aspect of all of this is making time to get to know your students on an individual level. By focusing on them, you are not only able to understand how they learn, but you can uncover what motivates them and how to keep them engaged.
Step One: Ways to re-engage students every 10 minutes.
I really related to finding a “hook.” Goodwin and Hubbell explain “in the opening minutes of any lesson, you need to grab student interest, not only forecasting where the lesson is going and what students will learn – something” (Goodwin & Hubbell, 2013). If you can get your students excited from the get-go, it will be easier to maintain their attention and keep them excited. I also found “using a ‘Vegas’ effect to put ‘sparkle in a lesson’ and maintain student interest” (Goodwin & Hubbell, 2013) key as well. Learning that students need to be re-engaged every 10 minutes was eye-opening for me. So finding something fun or “shiny” to perk the students up is huge. I got to thinking about my lesson that I am working on for this class, and tried to think of some “sparkle” that I could add. I thought of singing a silly song that relates to the story of The Little Red Hen:
The Little Red Hen’s Song:
This is the way I plant the seed, plant the seed, plant the seed.
This is the way I plant the seed
So early in the morning!
Repeat using the following verses in the above underlined
Water the wheat
Cut the wheat
Go to the mill
Make the dough
Bake the bread
Eat the bread
It follows along with my lesson plan focusing on the importance of the beginning, middle, and end of a story, but makes it a fun interlude for the students. I felt that this would be a fun break that the students could have after completing their picture puzzle activity. It would also help set the story structure in their minds.
Another idea I had was to ask the students which character in the story was their favorite. I thought I would ask them as they were working on their vocabulary word jumbles. For each character in the story, the students will jump up from their seats when their favorite character is called, and they will make the sound that animal makes. This breaks up the work a little, and gives the students a chance to be a little silly. We can also share a snack of bread and jam while working on the activities. The bread relates back to the story and the students will enjoy the snack as well.
I will also follow the warm-up, mini-lesson, independent work time, and then share session (Tovani, 2011). This method seems to build in ways to re-engage students several times. My warm-up is the Thumbs-Up, Thumbs-Down formative assessment, the mini-lesson is the Picture Puzzle and Word Jumbles activities, work-time is seen in The Little Red Hen Theater group activity, and the share session will be when they create their own stories, as well as when they share their stories that they got from the library.
Step Two: Offer students a choice
I believe that the activity that offers the students the most choice lies in The Little Red Hen Theatre activity. I will offer the students several different options for acting out the story: Dress-Up, Puppetry, Singing/Opera, and Dance. Working in groups, the students will choose which form they would like to use. This allows the students more freedom in their expression and can help them play to their individual strengths. They also are given a choice when they re-arrange the original story to make it their own. Each student is given the opportunity to change the story however they like to create a brand new story. Each students’ story will be exciting and different. They have complete control over their story.
Step Three: Identify how you will explicitly align the skills being taught with real-world relevancy
This lesson plan in intended for students in the first grade, so I feel that it is helping set the foundation for reading, interpreting stories, and expressing ideas. We all tell stories in our everyday lives. Even stories as mundane as tasks completed at work. Once they are able to fully understand story structure, the students will be able to use this information in creating their own stories. This is also knowledge that will follow them throughout their education. Utilizing a story such as The Little Red Hen, the students also learn a valuable lesson about helping others. They learn how important teamwork is, and they can apply that learning at home. Maybe, they will be more willing to help their parents out with activities like setting the table or cleaning up their toys.
I believe that one of the main goals for a teacher to have are to instill a love of learning in their students. We want our students to love coming to school, and looking forward to what they will learn that day. We do not want our students to dread coming to school – counting down the hours and minutes until they are “free” to go home.
So how do we keep our students engaged where we, as teachers, have expectations that we need to meet? This is where, again, understanding each students’ individual learning style is so important. If you are in tune with how each child learns, you will be able to develop lesson plans and activities that will not only challenge your students, but keep their attention as well.
As differentiated-instruction expert Carol Ann Tomlinson states, “In a sense, the teacher is continually auditioning kids in different settings—and the students get to see how they can contribute in a variety of contexts” (Tomlinson, 2013).
Larry Ferlazzo, author of Classroom Management Q&As broke down keeping students interested and engaged into 5 steps:
- “Assessing: At the start of the year (and, in fact, throughout the entire year), we want to find out more about where our students’ skills are, a process that informs our differentiation approach.”
- “Keeping students moving forward: This priority drives everything we do with students—even small moves like inviting sleepy readers to sit on top of desks. We can reinforce intrinsic motivation by emphasizing small wins.”
- “Differentiating assignments: Students can complete the same types of mental tasks while producing different end products. The idea is that students can gain proficiency even when completing different types of assignments or a different number of assignments (one big project vs. five smaller assignments).”
- “Praising effort and learning from mistakes: One way to encourage all students to work at their highest level of productivity and intellectual capacity is to praise effort and not intelligence. One way to develop students’ ‘growth mindset’ is to encourage them to risk making (and learning from) mistakes. Some students are afraid of making mistakes and being ridiculed for it. We want to turn that attitude on its head, helping them learn that we should instead ‘celebrate mistakes.’”
- “Using flexible grouping: Some confuse differentiation with the practice of grouping students by ability levels and teaching those small groups. While this is sometimes necessary and valuable, it is also important that students have the opportunity to participate in interest-based groups, mixed-ability groups, student-choice groups, and other variations” (Ferlazzo, 2013).
When I first began thinking about this discussion topic, rewards instantly came to mind. Who doesn’t like winning a prize? But as I read in The 12 Touchstones, Goodwin and Hubbell made a great point: “Rewards tend to produce short-term, but not long lasting changes in behavior” (Goodwin & Hubbell, 2013, pg. 68). This is not to say that you should never offer a reward, but I realized that we want the learning and education to be the real reward for the students – not just a prize.
I think that the most important aspect of all of this is making time to get to know your students on an individual level. By focusing on them, you are not only able to understand how they learn, but you can uncover what motivates them and how to keep them engaged.
Step One: Ways to re-engage students every 10 minutes.
I really related to finding a “hook.” Goodwin and Hubbell explain “in the opening minutes of any lesson, you need to grab student interest, not only forecasting where the lesson is going and what students will learn – something” (Goodwin & Hubbell, 2013). If you can get your students excited from the get-go, it will be easier to maintain their attention and keep them excited. I also found “using a ‘Vegas’ effect to put ‘sparkle in a lesson’ and maintain student interest” (Goodwin & Hubbell, 2013) key as well. Learning that students need to be re-engaged every 10 minutes was eye-opening for me. So finding something fun or “shiny” to perk the students up is huge. I got to thinking about my lesson that I am working on for this class, and tried to think of some “sparkle” that I could add. I thought of singing a silly song that relates to the story of The Little Red Hen:
The Little Red Hen’s Song:
This is the way I plant the seed, plant the seed, plant the seed.
This is the way I plant the seed
So early in the morning!
Repeat using the following verses in the above underlined
Water the wheat
Cut the wheat
Go to the mill
Make the dough
Bake the bread
Eat the bread
It follows along with my lesson plan focusing on the importance of the beginning, middle, and end of a story, but makes it a fun interlude for the students. I felt that this would be a fun break that the students could have after completing their picture puzzle activity. It would also help set the story structure in their minds.
Another idea I had was to ask the students which character in the story was their favorite. I thought I would ask them as they were working on their vocabulary word jumbles. For each character in the story, the students will jump up from their seats when their favorite character is called, and they will make the sound that animal makes. This breaks up the work a little, and gives the students a chance to be a little silly. We can also share a snack of bread and jam while working on the activities. The bread relates back to the story and the students will enjoy the snack as well.
I will also follow the warm-up, mini-lesson, independent work time, and then share session (Tovani, 2011). This method seems to build in ways to re-engage students several times. My warm-up is the Thumbs-Up, Thumbs-Down formative assessment, the mini-lesson is the Picture Puzzle and Word Jumbles activities, work-time is seen in The Little Red Hen Theater group activity, and the share session will be when they create their own stories, as well as when they share their stories that they got from the library.
Step Two: Offer students a choice
I believe that the activity that offers the students the most choice lies in The Little Red Hen Theatre activity. I will offer the students several different options for acting out the story: Dress-Up, Puppetry, Singing/Opera, and Dance. Working in groups, the students will choose which form they would like to use. This allows the students more freedom in their expression and can help them play to their individual strengths. They also are given a choice when they re-arrange the original story to make it their own. Each student is given the opportunity to change the story however they like to create a brand new story. Each students’ story will be exciting and different. They have complete control over their story.
Step Three: Identify how you will explicitly align the skills being taught with real-world relevancy
This lesson plan in intended for students in the first grade, so I feel that it is helping set the foundation for reading, interpreting stories, and expressing ideas. We all tell stories in our everyday lives. Even stories as mundane as tasks completed at work. Once they are able to fully understand story structure, the students will be able to use this information in creating their own stories. This is also knowledge that will follow them throughout their education. Utilizing a story such as The Little Red Hen, the students also learn a valuable lesson about helping others. They learn how important teamwork is, and they can apply that learning at home. Maybe, they will be more willing to help their parents out with activities like setting the table or cleaning up their toys.
References
Ferlazzo, L. (2013) Classroom management Q&As (Kindle Edition). Bethesda, MD: Education Week Press.
Goodwin, B., & Hubbell, E. (2013) The 12 touchstones of good teaching: A checklist for staying focused Every Day. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
RSA. (2010).The surprising truth about what motivates us [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc.
Tomlinson, C. (1999) The differentiated classroom. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Tovani, C. (2011). So What Do They Really Know? Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.
Ferlazzo, L. (2013) Classroom management Q&As (Kindle Edition). Bethesda, MD: Education Week Press.
Goodwin, B., & Hubbell, E. (2013) The 12 touchstones of good teaching: A checklist for staying focused Every Day. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
RSA. (2010).The surprising truth about what motivates us [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc.
Tomlinson, C. (1999) The differentiated classroom. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Tovani, C. (2011). So What Do They Really Know? Portland, ME: Stenhouse Publishers.