When creating assignments for students, there are a few things to think about. One in particular is literacy. No matter what subject or content you teach, it is important that students know the literacy that is involved. Reading and writing are basic skills that students need to comprehend each subject. However, reading and writing have become a chore for students, something they feel like they have to do rather than something they want to do. We need to create assignments that the students can relate to and find at least somewhat enjoyable so that it becomes something they WANT to do.
Writing should be something students are motivated to do. However, a lot of teachers use writing as a form of discipline, an undesirable consequence to demote bad behavior. Writing should give students power, the chance for them to speak their mind and be heard. Part of this also has to do with the type of assignment. We can assign topics to students to write about or we can give them a choice, allowing them to pick something, even if it is from a list of pre-approved topics, to write and learn about. It is important to give students choice in their work because it creates meaning for them.
Especially when designing major assignments, whether take-home or in-class, it is important to create something worth doing. A good assignment should have students use critical thinking as a tool to apply knowledge, to show what has been learned. "You give good prompts and a few student models and a little advice - and what do you know? They learn by doing." By scaffolding students into higher levels of thinking and application, students can be given the opportunity to learn on their own, explore, and become a part of their education. The best way for students to learn is for them to experience it and be active in the content.
From personal experience, the most memorable lessons have been those that I was physically involved in. In middle and high school, the teachers I liked were the ones who created lessons that the students could relate to and enjoy. I definitely agree with the fact that students learn by doing. Even now, creating lessons myself, I enjoy the ones where the students get to participate, like my MicroTeaching II, which you can find back in December 2013. During that lesson, students learned about volume and surface area by exploring it and creating their own equations, which is a lot more effective than me telling them what the equations are and expecting them to remember it (just as Mike...I mean Nick (lol)).
For some ideas of classroom activities in math and science, you can visit http://www.howtosmile.org/
Teachers know that students need to work on their reading and writing skills, but you are 100% right, it becomes a chore. I feel like many students don't like to read because they have never read something that was boring or they were unable to relate to the characters and situations. Students are also weary of reading if they know that their skills are lower than most people in the class. We need to help these students see that reading can be engaging and we should try to work with students who stumble through a lot of words. I remembered a specific RAFT assignment that I had Junior year of high school, where I had to take on the persona of someone in the Civil War who was writing in their diary. This was an exciting assignment for me, because I liked to imagine myself in that time period. I learned a lot from that assignment, more than if my teachers simply stood in front of the class and blasted off facts. This type of writing is something that many students would find more engaging than simply answering a prompt.
ReplyDeleteI really like the idea of letting students choose what they want to write about. I think students enjoy writing, even a little bit more, when they have a choice. This can be short free writes at the beginning of class or summaries at the end of class about what they have learned that day. The blogs that we have remind me of students having a choice of what they can write. We write each week about class or the readings and we are able to do so in whatever format we want. With assignments that are worth doing, this should require a lot of planning and I think even some choice as well. This should help to make the assignments a little more exciting and worth doing.
ReplyDeleteHey Sarah,
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with what you wrote about reading and writing becoming a chore. Creating assignments that the students find enjoyable is very important. It comes down to knowing your students and really letting them express themselves. My Spanish professors come to mind. They always kept the readings interesting. One of them knows my interests very well and one time she assigned a terribly complicated reading for me to analyze and present to the class. The reading was a challenge but I ended up enjoying myself and loving the ideas hidden within the story. Well yeah, I believe a big part that plays into it is how well we know our students.
SORRY FOR TYPING SOO MUCH
-Adrián