Tovani has a student named Erin that likes to test the
boundary as a student. This student would consistently say “so what?” to any
comment that any other student says. The other students would shut down after
this student would make her comments. So after she made an assignment for her
students that twenty other teachers were going to come and observe she decided
to use Erin as inspiration for her modeling. She decided to say tell her
students to ask themselves “So What?” when they are answering the questions
about their reading. The students really engaged in this assignment and came up
with some really engaging answers.
She was really concerned and stressing about how Erin was
going to make her look to the teachers that were coming to observe. We all have
or will have those Erin’s in our class. But what do we do when those “Erin’s” have a point? Tovani talks about how
she sees that the assignment is not engaging the students. So in a way it is
like the students asking her “So What?” Why are we teaching these things to our
student’s. I am sure that we have the best intentions when coming up with these
lessons but I think we truly need to ask ourselves “So What?” for every
assignment. We need to make sure that our assignments have meaning for our
students and ourselves.
I was asked the question about motivation in a
comment in a previous blog. I feel that relating to lesson to the students
lives is essential for the students to actually learn something. I don’t know
how many times I have learned or memorized something for a class or a test so
that I can pass it. Then after the class or the test is over the information
and everything that I learned just disappears. I passed the class but I really didn’t
learn anything. Then there are some classes that certain assignments and
lessons really stand out to me and I still remember and look at fondly. Why are
these assignments so special? It’s because I took personal meaning from them
and actually learned something from them through that personal connection I
made. So how can we make these assignments an lessons more motivational to the
students? Choose content and mediums that they will be interested in, ask them
questions that they have to either put themselves in the shoes of what they are
reading or ask if they have ever had that instance in their own lives. In the book
a student was talking to Tovani about her connection with the reading they were
doing and the student finally started to understand that a character in the
reading was poor and then related it to her own life when her and her friends were
making fun of a poor kid at school. She then realized how her actions were
hurtful and the kid probably couldn’t help his appearance because he was poor. Our
lives are so complex and we have so many things that happening our individual
lives that we can find these connections fairly easily to relate them to our
students.
I like how Tovani use her students as tool in her lesson. It is very interesting to adjust what the teacher has or face in the classroom in the lesson and to use these materials as helpful steps in the plan. I believe that Tovani is able to motivate her students and engage them in the tasks by involving this technique. The learners found the lesson interesting and touch their lives. This strategy makes sense and helps them to learn successfully. It is advisable that teachers need to make connections between their lessons and the students’ lives, interests, and needs.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you in the fact that students need to feel connected to what they are reading to learn from it or understand the text. If students do not have background knowledge on the subject, it is harder for them to connect. If the student has no interest in the text, it will be harder to be motivated.
ReplyDeleteI think it was super cool that Tovani used a behavior that is 100% of the time a negative thing, and turned it into a positive action in the class. I think this allowed the students to also see that she is in full control, and should you keep testing, and pushing beyond the boundaries, you will then have no other place to go as the teacher will turn all your negativity into positive learning.WAY COOL!
ReplyDeleteThis is great, I agree with you, we should all ask ourselves "so what?" when creating a lesson, as you said, we want to engage students, and the best way is to connect the topic to something that they will really enjoy learning about. Our lessons definitely need to have a purpose that goes beyond of learning for the sake of learning, to learning for the sake of knowledge and understanding.
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