Week #4 Initial Blog

Essential Question:  How do we keep our lessons engaging? Does innovation play a part in this?

Keeping students engaged has been a conundrum for teachers for many, many years.  Teachers often wonder how they can make lessons engaging without being simply entertaining. How can they create lessons that are engaging and encourage learning?  With years of teaching behind me, and my share of mistakes littering my past, I have come to the conclusion that I cannot solely depend on other’s innovative ideas to make my classes engaging for my students.  I must be who I am and use other’s ideas that fit who I am to create in my classroom a successful learning environment.

With the key point being, “use your own individual skills and talents, rather than those of others, to make your classroom engaging”, as the foundation for quality teaching, I can “be myself” in my classroom and engage and motivate my students to learn.  I am rather shy and reserved and would really make a fool of myself if I attempted to begin my school year as in “Teach Like A Pirate”.  But, I can still be who I am and keep my students from boredom.  I, like Sheerin (2012), can use student-directed learning techniques and other innovative ideas to keep my students engaged. One way I have done this is by assigning projects that direct students to reflect on who they are and design and create “anthologies” of their lives through the use of technology to find sources for their project.  I can use my imagination in my math classes when giving “teacher-led presentations” and rather than use the names and “storylines” from the word problems, I can use my student’s names and situations from their lives in the problems...complete with stick figures of my students on the board.  I can change my teaching techniques by offering a flipped classroom like Barseghian (2012) suggests and offer fun drawings at the beginning of the video lecture to have fun with my students.

Aside from various learning ideas to engage my students, I can also work at building relationships with them.  This is easily done by sharing who I am with my students by telling stories, laughing, and encouraging my students to laugh during class.  This idea of not taking life too seriously, when controlled in the classroom, actually helps students to take their learning more seriously.  Probably one of the most innovative techniques to learning in my classroom has been the building of relationships between my students and myself.  I have discovered that these relationships create a better learning environment both academically and behaviorally by helping my students to be better engaged in class because of a desire to be a part of “what is happening”.

 

Sheerin, N., (2012).  Keeping students engaged:  here’s five tips.  Applied Educational Systems, http://blog.aeseducation.com/2012/01/keeping-students-engaged-4/

Teaching, J.,  How do I keep my students interested?  Teaching Community.

http://blog.aeseducation.com/2012/01/keeping-students-engaged-4/

Barseghian, T., (2012).  Five ways to bring innovation into the classroom.

Mind Shift. http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/08/five-ways-to-bring-innovation-into-the-classroom/