Reflections on engagement and motivation methods

Okay, so I'm a bit behind here. This teaching thing can get a bit overwhelming sometimes. If I was to compare teaching to running, I'd say that I hit my wall about 2 weeks ago and am just now finding my second wind. I feel like I'm setting a new stride for part 2 of this first year marathon. Hopefully I won't be outdoing myself and will be able to maintain a steady pace. It'll get difficult sometimes, but not unmanageable.

In our last meeting we discussed how to engage and inspire students to be active participants in their learning. I found the group lists each table came up with to be particularly useful. There were a couple of things that jumped out at me during our share out. The first one was making a competition out of an activity. I was surprised I had overlooked this method since I myself am an extremely competitive person. The other was giving the students a chance to express themselves, (yet another seemingly obvious way to engage). Well, I decided to integrate both of these methods into some science lessons. The competition method seemed to work well, even when the kids didn't know what they were competing for. It seems if you ask kids to prove themselves, they're more than willing to step up to the plate.

As for the expression method, that one I used in their final product-they had to create a new species. They had guidelines for what information I was expecting about their species, but the creativity part, the method by which they demonstrated their knowledge, was up to them. I'm still grading their final products, but I can tell you this much, I'm seeing a wide range of creatures and they were definitely engaged in the project.

All in all, I learned a lot this first trimester of teaching, (grades are due Monday night, but the next tri starts on the first). I did a lot of experimenting with teaching methods and plan to do the even more in the second tri. Still, it's nice to feel like I'm starting to get some tools in that teacher toolbox...

Honing those teaching skills...

Okay, so I've been slacking a bit when it comes to my blog. Besides struggling to just keep up with my classes, sometimes I'm just not sure what to write about. I feel like I'm learning so much all the time. I'm already thinking about how I can tweak the structure of my classes next trimester. I want my students to get the most out of what I'm teaching, as all good teachers do. It's strange though when you teach the same class more than once and the lesson is a complete hit in one and a complete miss in the other. I guess that just makes it hard to judge how good the lesson was overall. At the same time though, having the opportunity to teach the same lesson plan more than once tends to bring out overall "flaws" in the way you're teaching. I'm finding often times my instruction needs a bit of "fine-tuning." I'm trying to work more on making my targets and objectives very clear and concise. It can be difficult, but thankfully, I do feel like I'm improving!

One more quick thing, anyone who's into chili (delicious homemade chili to be exact), Red Canyon High is having our annual chili fundraiser this Saturday, November 7, at our Edwards campus. I believe it starts at noon. We also have a great silent auction to go with lots of different kinds of yummy chili!! Please come check it out!