Strategies for Helping Students Motivate Themselves. Editor's Note: This piece was adapted from Building a Community of Self-Motivated Learners: Strategies to Help Students Thrive in School and Beyond by Larry Ferlazzo, available March 21, 2015 from Routledge.
My previous post reviewed research on extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, and described the four qualities that have been identified as critical to helping students motivate themselves: autonomy, competence, relatedness, and relevance. In this post, I'll discuss practical classroom strategies to reinforce each of these four qualities. Autonomy Providing students with freedom of choice is one strategy for promoting learner autonomy. Educators commonly view this idea of choice through the lens of organizational and procedural choice. Some researchers, however, believe that a third option, cognitive choice, is a more effective way to promote longer-lasting student autonomy.
Geometry Magic: Turn 2 Circles into 1 Square. 10+ Resources for Learning About the Math and Science of Sports. As regular readers of this blog know, I am a proponent of getting kids involved in physical activities like bicycling, skiing, and playing team sports.
I also like to see connections made between students' interest in sports and lessons in the classroom. The resources below can all be used to create lessons connected to students' interests in sports. The Science of NFL Football is a series of ten videos from NBC Learn explaining and demonstrating math and science concepts as they relate to football. The list of topics covered in the Science of NFL Football includes Torque & Center of Mass, Pythagorean Theorem, Geometric Shapes, Projectile Motion & Parabolas, Vectors, Kinematics, Nutrition, and Newton's 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Laws of Motion. A community for number string design. Math Talks - NT 1-4. Using Google Apps in a Math Classroom. One-Word Math Classes. You know what’s often missing from math class?
Yes, candy bars, but even more important than that: coherence. Math class shouldn’t be a mishmash pile of facts, thrown together haphazardly, like an academic version of The White Album. It should be a perfectly interlocking tower of truths, climbing upwards with singular purpose—an academic Sgt. Pepper or Abbey Road. A good class isn’t a greatest hits record. In that spirit, I’ve been taking each topic in the secondary math curriculum—algebra, geometry, calculus, etc. You must choose a single word to complete the sentence, “[Branch of math] is the mathematics of _____.” Games-2013-06-06. Math = Love. Eric Milou. Flipped classroom 101. Math Maven's Mysteries Home. Alternatives to YouTube. 13 Tech Tools That Spark Critical Thinking. Five Ways Students Can Share Videos Without YouTube. It is not a secret that I enjoy helping teachers learn how to use video creation tools with their students.
Creating videos is a process that students enjoy because the final product is something that they can share with a potentially large audience. Teachers like video projects because students get engaged in developing and sharing their best work. At the end of the project there is always a question of how to share the work. 5 Free Tools for Creating Whiteboard Videos. Math Resources - The Common Core Conversation. Common Core Middle Grades Math. Canva for Education - Lesson Plans Incorporating Visuals Across the Curriculum.
Canva is a nice tool for designing infographics, collages, flyers, and slides in your web browser or on your iPad.
I've been a fan of the service since it launched. In fact, I like it so much that I became an unpaid advisor to them when they started thinking about developing resources specifically for teachers. The new Canva for Education site features eighteen lesson plans written by Vicki Davis, Steven Anderson, Terri Eichholz, and Paul Hamilton. The lesson plans include things like Paul's making historical infographics in which students summarize and visually represent the connections between historical events and their causes. For the elementary school crowd Terri has a lesson called Initial Selfies in which students learn to isolate and pronounce the initial, medial vowel, and final sounds.
Video - How to Create Custom Columns on Padlet Walls. a2tam.pdf. Chart students’ growth with digital badges. By Kristin Fontichiaro and Angela Elkordy 2/26/2015 Topics: Gamification, Assessment Remember turning in your grades at the end of the school year?
10 Free Math Games Your Kids Should Be Playing. The mere mention of the word “mathematics” is enough to strike fear into the hearts of adults around the world.
For thousands of people, the thought of doing annual tax returns, applying for a mortgage, or even just helping children with their homework can bring them out in an episode of cold sweats and get them running for the nearest calculator. Luckily their are phone apps to help adults improve, but the long-term solution appears reasonably obvious; children need to be engaged with maths from a young age, making use of tools, games, and apps that make the process of learning arithmetic fun rather than an arduous task. Students most effectively learn math working on problems that they enjoy, not drills or exercises. Students learn math best when they approach the subject as something they enjoy, according to a Stanford education expert.
How to Create Online Collaborative Whiteboards. 3 Ways of Getting Student Feedback to Improve Your Teaching. During the summer, you'll want to improve your teaching and lessons, but how do you decide where to start?
Your students! I use these three ways to get feedback from my students on my lessons, activities, and what I can do to improve next year. Collecting Input First, I’m trying to identify my awful lessons or units so that I can rework them over the summer. For example, I set as a goal to take the most boring lesson or unit from one year and making it epic next year. Second, I want to understand firsthand what kids love and what they hate. 1. Teaching Math Strategies.
21st Century Learning. 15 Resources: Prepare for Cultural Diversity in Class. A person’s culture deeply impacts his or her way of thinking and learning; that presents a special challenge to educators because modern classrooms often have a beautiful mishmash of students from different backgrounds.
How can you adapt and demonstrate cultural awareness in your teaching? The following resources may help. Pursue a Multicultural Mindset The most diverse cities in the U.S. have fairly equal numbers of Hispanics, whites, blacks, and Asians/Pacific Islanders. The 9 Best Web Tools Teachers Will Use This Year. Clear communication with students and their parents is one of the primary goals of every teacher. Start this year with just that by using a variety of tools to share your plans and expectations for the coming academic year. In past years I have used a number of these assets but I have not as clearly organized them as I have this year. Common Core / CCSS Mathematics Vocabulary Cards for All Grade Levels. Mcdowell, Michael D / Math. Five Research-Driven Education Trends At Work in Classrooms. 50+ Tools for Differentiating Instruction Through Social Media.
Imagine a world where resources were limited to what was found in the classroom or the school closet known as the "Curriculum Materials Room. " Picture a world where students wrote letters with pen and paper to communicate with other students and adults outside of the building. Due to postage costs, the teacher either sent the letters in bulk or paid for stamps out of his or her own pocket.
33 Amazingly Useful Websites You Never Knew Existed. 6 tips for making the most of PBL. Editor’s note: This is the first in a four-part blog series from the co-authors of Reinventing Project-Based Learning: Your Field Guide to Real-World Projects in the Digital Age. Do you have an idea for a project-based learning (PBL) experience that you think your students will love? Maybe the project idea was sparked by their questions. Using Old Tech (Not Edtech) to Teach Thinking Skills.
I've been trying to use Google Docs to good effect in my ninth grade history classroom. It's a critical tool in that it lets me see the students puzzle out answers to their questions (especially with a heavy reliance of the "see revisions" function). I've viewed classroom technology as the means to sharing knowledge, in addition to acquiring or manipulating it.
Yet I find that not only has the computer itself become something of a distraction, but the students aren't making enough use of the tech’s "share-ability" -- that is, they struggle to work effectively together on it, and to have their ideas cohere in an intelligible way. 5 Fantastic, Fast Formative Assessment Tools.
I thought I could read my students' body language. I was wrong. Thinking Blocks - Model Math Problems on iPads, Interactive Whiteboards, and in Your Browser. Autodesk's Design Software is Now Free for Students and Teachers. All Fun & Games? Understanding Learner Outcomes Through Educational Games. Over the past several years, there has been tremendous interest among educators in the use of digital games as serious learning.
Advocates of game-based learning for K-12 students cite the value of digital games to teach and reinforce skills that prepare students for college and career, such as collaboration, problem solving, creativity, and communication. Not as often discussed is our ability to use students' in-game actions as evidence for the assessment of skills and knowledge, including those not easily measured by traditional multiple-choice tests. 5 Tools for Creating Multimedia Quizzes - A Comparison Chart. The Stereotypes That Distort How Americans Teach and Learn Math. Speed doesn't matter, and there's no such thing as a "math person. " How the Common Core's approach to the discipline could correct these misperceptions.
Lghomemathclub - Number Sense. Math k 8 tinstructionalstrategies. Mathematics in Movies. Category. 8 Videos That Prove Math Is Awesome. Believe it or not, math is really an art. Make math concrete with digital fabrication. For too many students, doing mathematics means just plugging numbers into a memorized formula to get an answer. Math and Inquiry: The Importance of Letting Students Stumble. A Science Leadership Academy sophomore puts the finishing touches on a geometry project during her lunch period. For subjects like math and foreign language, which are traditionally taught in a linear and highly structured context, using more open-ended inquiry-based models can be challenging.