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...