In 100 words or more, comment on the following:
Think of a lesson or unit you're currently teaching or preparing to teach. Ask yourself why this unit is relevant to students' present and future lives. If it isn't relevant, how could you adjust your objectives to make it more relevant? (See the suggestions on p. 12 of the article.)
Don’t forget to comment (in 50 words or more) on another participant’s comment on this question.
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16 comments:
A lesson that I taught today was on the skill of comparing and contrasting. Having read the article, I was more cognizant of the relevance of the skill while planning my lesson. While actually knowing how to compare and contrast events, characters, or objects might not initially seem important, it is apparent that the skill is a foundational skill for problem solving throughout many aspects of life.
With this in mind, I built a mini lesson into the rationale section of the compare/contrast lesson. I asked students why they needed to know this. They didn’t really have an answer. I proceeded to ask a few students what they plan to be when they grow up. From their answers, I gave examples of jobs that they could be offered in their aspired professions, and showed them how they might compare and contrast in order to weigh the pros and cons of each job.
By providing real life examples and applying them, students will have more buy in to their learning. No one wants to waste their time, so it only makes sense that if we expect kids to want to learn something, we need to provide a reasonable rationale.
I think this question is interesting because it is about the issue of relevance, which is something the teachers at my school have been asked to address directly in our weekly lesson plans. Our principal told us in our first staff meeting this year that if we didn’t know why our students would want to learn something, then we shouldn’t be teaching it. For the first two weeks I included my best guess as to why I thought students would want to learn what I was about to teach them, but then it occurred to me that maybe I should just ask them, instead of pretending I could read their minds. The student responses have helped me to adjust my objectives because I know exactly what interests them about the topic so I can teach the content with a bent towards their interests. I don’t get asked “Why do I have to learn this?” because they have already answered that question for themselves. They have decided the topic is relevant to them before I begin to teach it, and I can use their responses to help keep their interest going.
Currently, in science, I am teaching a unit on balance and motion. This unit is very relevant everyday life. If the students see the relevance or not is another story. Using the new inquiry based science program, the students are doing a lot of free exploration, which they love. The direct instruction piece is no longer present. I feel this makes science more exciting for the students, but more difficult to show the younger students the exact concept you are trying to teach. They see the lesson as 50 minutes of fun, not necessarily as a valuable science lesson that affects their lives. I think connecting these science lessons to their everyday activities is one way to make it more relevant.
A lesson I am preparing to teach is fluency building (Read Naturally). Students will build fluency by repeated reading, monitoring progress, and choral reading with a fluent reader. They will increase comprehension, recall facts, write summaries, and learn the difference between speed reading and fluent reading.
Students are in this specific reading class due to low reading scores or teacher/parent recommendation. This is relevant to their present lives because they are expected to make meaning from text independently in almost every academic area. For future relevance, we could discuss daily obstacles such as phone contracts and the importance to re-read, clarify, and question.
I am preparing to teach the novel The Pearl by John Steinbeck. This novel is essentially about a poor uneducated native fisherman who dives for pearls and finds a giant black pearl. What should be good fortune soon turns to misfortune as he and his family are forced to flee for their lives. There are many excellent themes that could be pulled from this story, but I like to get students to see how the main character, Kino is uneducated and as a result is at the mercy of the doctor, the priest,and the pearl buyers. In fact, one of his biggest dreams is that his son will go to school to learn what is really in the books. This has real world ties because it points out the value that others place on an education that is not only taken for granted by our students, but often disregarded entirely and even complained about. Another real world tie is that there are still many underdeveloped countries whose people are living for a chance to work and learn, and they are getting many of the jobs that used to be occupied by workers in America. With so much of the world's business going online, these workers will work harder and for less money than American workers. This illustrates the growing need for hard-working educated young people to keep the American economy and future strong. The sense of privilege many teens feel is unwarranted, and students may find this out the hard way if they do not learn to put the effort in.
A: Response to Jolene
Even if students are necessarily able to explain the relevance and think your lesson is just 50 minutes of fun, you're still planting a seed for love of science and learning. I teach middle school students and I don't expect them to master every little detail I teach them about nutrition because (I'm hoping) they will get further education on this topic as they go through school. If the lesson or activity was memorable and fun for them, they next time they are exposed to similar material, I want them to go "oh, yeah, I remember learning about that in Mrs. Stark's class!". I think it's great when students get to build on their previous experiences, but they have to start somewhere and it might as well be fun so they don't dread it in the future!
I am currently teaching a lesson on nutrition. How is this relevant to kids’ present and future lives? That’s a tricky question for the age that I teach. Presently they do not have a lot of choice when it comes to the foods that are purchased and brought into their homes. Teaching kids about making healthy food choices and eating healthy snacks hopefully will carry through to what they “pick” or request for from the store when their families go shopping. As far as how relevant it is to their future lives….that answer is absolutely its relevant! It is my hopes that through these lessons and learning that as kids grow into teenagers and young adults they have been given the skills and knowledge to make healthy food choices for themselves. A direct consequence of making poor choices when it comes to nutrition will be poor health, weight issues, medical bills, and stress on your emotional well being. I did brainstorm with my kindergartners all the different things that healthy bodies can do…play sports, travel, hunt, fish….they understand that good nutrition was pertinent to living a healthy lifestyle.
A:response to Lela
I agree with your last statement that "The sense of privilege many teens feel is unwarranted, and students may find this out the hard way if they do not learn to put the effort in." I think its a great idea to show students life through literature! It is here that students are given an opportunity to view someone elses challenges/mistakes/struggles and learn from them without struggling or making the mistakes on their own.
Response to Jolene
I know the science curriculum is pretty new and inquiry based, but is there any lee-way after the students have explored the concepts through experiments to have a discussion of real-world situations that this applies to? I haven't really seen this process in action, and I don't know how much freedom you have, but I know that students do not tend to see the ties between the classroom and real life on their own. With balance and motion, I immediately think of things like skateboards and bicycles and traffic and trains. Discovery is nice, but until students have those thinking skills to make the connections, nothing will ever replace a good teaher.
Sorry, I was distracted by my daughter wanting me to read her a story, I meant teacher. :)
Initial Response to Article 1 (Question 1B)
My sixth grade general music students will soon begin a unit on classical composers. Each year as we begin this section, I am usually met with groans and moans. I have learned to capitalize on the students' initial negative reaction. We discuss their first reactions, and their misconceptions about the composers. I then ask them to name as many classical composers as possible. Once the list is compiled, they are usually surprised by its length. Next, I ask the students to work in small groups to determine which statements on my list of composer facts is accurate. For example, on the fact sheet about J.S. Bach, I state that Bach had 20 children. They are always quite surprised when they are told that all of my seemingly far-fetched statements are actually true. At this point, I fully have their interest. I think we, as teachers, need to engage our students in our subject matter; otherwise, they will tune us out before we ever have a chance to explain the importance of our content area. As the unit develops, students are asked to make comparisons between composers of the past and current composers. We discuss ways in which classical music is still used today, and its impact on humanity. One way I hope to develop this lesson farther is to have students analyze a contemporary composer of their choice and predict the future impact of this person's music. In these ways, I hope to engage students in relevant lessons.
Responding to Amanda (Question1B)
I, too, believe that compare/contrast skills will help our students throughout life. I feel that we teach many such skills in our classrooms on a daily basis that seem unimportant to our students at the time. Yet these are life skills that will hopefully be applied long after they leave us. I think you developed an excellent lesson that helped your students relate to ways in which the assignment could be useful to them in the future. Perhaps you even opened a new door to a student as he or she considered career options.
Chrissie;
Thank you for your encouragement and feedback on my lesson. I really like the way you pulled the kids into your lesson by giving them seemingly far-fetched facts about the composers. I'll bet they became much more interested in them and their music after they learned how amazing some of them really were!
In response to dstark;
I like the idea of asking the kids why they need to learn something. This is something that I also do. Sometimes I will start off by asking my kids "why do you think we need to know this?" and they will come up with relevant answers that I hadn't even thought of, and they are more applicable to their lives than anything I might have come up with on my own.
1B
To create a more relevant lesson for my students, I would need to look beyond the immediate, and concentrate on life-long goals and hopes. At that perspective of life-long achievement, I would then break-down those tasks with goals these students could achieve and reach within a one-year time frame. These are the two most important strategies to help the students feel success: 1) I would engage the students through interest level activities that increase their desire to learn and participate,
and 2) develop lessons that make visible to the student they had accomplished something worthwhile to their immediate environment
A: response to Jolene
I think what Jolene said is spot on. To give students a chance to view education as fun is relevant to life. Adding information with brain activity, we know that the brain is at top function when we are having fun and excited to learn. I know that when I am challenged and having fun, my memory of the new knowledge greatly increases.
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