Touchstone 5: Engage students' interest with every lesson

The final advice provided by Goodwin and Hubbell (2013) in this touchstone is echoed by others in many domains of thought: Start with the why. Human beings are almost always best motivated when they understand why they are required to do what they must do. Adolescents that are often less intrinsically and extrinsically motivated in their learning environment and therefore the requirement for a reason for learning is much higher. I tend to focus every class on a hook. I always pose a question to begin our learning, “What’s wrong with this problem? What do you think happens next? What do you think?” I find that this allows students an immediate sense of ownership. McCarthy (2014) poses student choice as another important tenant of student engagement. I seek to provide students with a choice of difficulty level in task and a choice for output and notetaking. Students in my class are allowed to communicate verbally, in writing, or digitally and are always challenged to choose methods of communication that they struggle with in order to improve. However, if a student feels as though their preferred work style is not valid, then another road block to engagement has been established. Finally, as a mathematics teacher, I find myself returning to the video linked below. Mathematics is seen solely for its procedures. The learning of mathematics that will endure for students, is the ability to map and interpret quantitative relationships in the real world. Whenever the class loses sight of this ultimate goal, I know that it is time for me to take a step back from instruction and reassert a definitive vision for mathematics in reality.

References:

Edutopia. (2011, September 20). How To Make Math Meaningful. Retrieved October 25, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZaZGL-vP5E

McCarthy, John (2014). Learner Interest Matters: Strategies for Empowering Student Choice. Retrieved November 3, 2018, from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/differentiated-instruction-learner-interest-matters-john-mccarthy