ELA/TESL
Let students know at the start of the term that they can receive one do-over on a summative assignment during the year without needing to give a reason (compassionate design)
Caring: Compassionate design and showing students how you integrate this type of design is core in creating a caring environment. While this does put some extra work on the teacher, it could allow for students to feel more motivated in the classroom which is better for us in the long-run.
Measurements and fractions matter because without them it would be difficult to follow a simple recipe such as making cookies or a cake. To prove this to you, today we will make a cake.
Usefulness: Activity to demonstrate the usefulness, students need to understand why they are doing something.
At the end of the year, the art teacher decides to give a second chance to students on one project they did during the year to improve it or a new project in a short period of time.
Successful: Challenging students and giving them a second chance to improve themselves is a way to succeed and change their self-perceptions of competence.
Give students creative freedom when it comes to the format they want to submit the final cumulative project - offer them choices between a short film, a video essay, an essay, or journal entries.
eMpowerment: By giving students a choice in how they want to demonstrate their understanding and their relationship with their learning leaves the students feeling motivated, feeling that they have a choice in what they do with their learning.
In a class that has a lot of sports team players, using short stories about sports when covering responses.
Interest: Choosing the content based off of the interest of students will allow for them to want to interact with the content. Figuring out your students interest, sports for example, is a good way to choose relatable content.
Today students will receive a pop quiz covering Quadratic formulas. After, if there is time we will review the quiz and go over the answers together.
Success: Students who feel successful tend to be more motivated. Students tend to be motivated when they receive clear direction, or rubrics, feel challenged, and receive regular feedback - short quizzes?
Arts are everywhere, that is why today, students will go around town and try to find any type of art.
Usefulness: The activity demonstrates usefulness by giving real-world examples to students and where they can actually see art in their day-to-day life.
Provide students with trigger warnings for difficult knowledge, as well as resources available to them for their emotional process with the difficult knowledge (I.E. the TRC Report).
Cared: By providing a safe and healthy learning space for students will help them want to come to class, regardless of what they are learning
At the start of an LES, give students a clear rubric and instructions for the complex task that will take place at the end of the unit.
Success: Given that students will receive instructions and rubrics at the start of the LES, they will be able to see the path towards success and will be able to see the effort and its cost from the start.
Let’s play a game of Kahoot / Theme: Earth, Core, & Mantel: divide yourselves into groups of 5. The group with the most correct answers gets to choose how we learn about Volcanic activity next week.
Interest: Does the student demonstrate an interest? Vary the learning activities - visually stimulating materials - social interaction, games, debates
Asking students are they feel when they come into class or in arts ask students to show in a way they feel comfortable how they are feeling at the moment (whether just with the teacher or during a presentation)
Cared for: Do students believe the instructor cares - devote time and energy to help students. Making reasonable accommodations - asking how they are doing can help a student feel cared for and motivate them to participate or improve their skills.
Ask the students (for their cumulative project, aimed grade here is sec. 5) to base their projects with the following prompts - Where do you see yourself in 5 years? What kind of relationships are you in? Where would you want to live in - Why?
Usefulness: By offering opportunities to students to reflect on their future, they can examine why history and geography may be useful to have as background knowledge, and how they use it unknowingly (like when they plan trips etc.)
When doing a formal speech, doing a lesson on covering interview response techniques.
Useful: This lesson will give students something that they can use in the long-term. Some might already be looking at entering the workforce so this could also be useful for their real-world short-term goals.
Lab: Growing Germs: students will have the choice of two options to present their findings: Option #1: write a 500 words essay explaining your findings or Option #2: PowerPoint presentation showing and explaining your results.
eMpowerment: Students need to believe they have control over some aspects of their learning. Give them choices but don’t overwhelm them.
Let's use different things to do art food, paint, humor, and different influences in popular culture.
Interest: Different types of activities are a great way to keep your students interested
Giving the students different format options for their final cumulative project, making clear rubrics and assignment instructions, breaking the project into smaller chunks and giving the students tight deadlines with feedback at every step.
Successful: By making instructions and rubrics clear, and by giving them feedback and tighter deadlines for broken down steps, we offer students a chance to not fall behind and get a grade they deserve and ultimately their success in the classroom
Giving students the choice of how they would like to present their essay between written, orally or a mixed media form.
eMpowerment: Students have a sense of competence from the teacher as they are given the ability to make decisions related to their assignment. This also covers the content that they would need to interact with while giving them the ability to work on techniques they have a preference for.
Teacher: “Reggie! You missed the test on Long Division last week!, What happened?”
Reggie: “My Grandma was very ill and passed away.”
Teacher: “Oh, I am so sorry for your loss, I hope you are feeling ok. Listen, how about we take some time at lunch, and you can come in and write the test?”
Cared for: Do students believe the instructor cares - devote time and energy to help student. Making reasonable accommodations - asking how they are doing can help a student feel cared for and motivate them to participate or improve their skills.
Let’s do a project where you need to work in pairs to reproduce the other person. You can also choose the method to do the portrait (ex. paint, drawings, sculpture, etc.).
eMpowerment: Students are more motivated when they get to choose their partners and the material to do a project rather than having the teacher choose for them.
Giving the students decide on a local and global issue they think is important and see how their class (I.E geography and history) influence these issues. For example, the climate crisis and how it is affecting colonized countries.
Interest: By having the students choose which local and global issues they want to talk about allows them to stay interested and intrinsically motivated.