Teaching is hard work. Being a great teacher and motivating kids to grow to their potential is even harder. Experts and administrators tell teachers they must help all students meet the same standards and effectively differentiate for the individual needs of each student. (Do you have your web cam turned off, because I don’t see you laughing or smiling?) If you are a secondary teacher like myself, you meet with somewhere close to 150 students a day. Is it impossible work? No. Don’t forget that you have 150 students to help you do the work. If you are trying to do it all for them, then you’re up the creek.
One of the best ways to differentiate is to build choice into as many of your assignments as possible, even daily homework assignments. Alderman (2003) encourages teachers to use open ended reading and writing assignments. I personally give my students a choice on their daily homework and every unit’s culminating project. This keeps things interesting and less redundant for me as well. All I did was establish five different types of assignments that could be done over the course of the week that related to the topics and suggested reading. After a small amount of training my students could choose their own modality of learning. The goal of structured choice work is to help students become self-regulated learners (Alderman, 2003). While guided practice for general reading and writing strategies is essential (Reeves, 2006; Schmoker, 2006), choice can help provide the natural differentiation without working your tail-off.
The self-regulated learner is also capable of self-monitoring , self-correcting, and self-evaluation. Yes, it takes time to teach self-regulation, but doing so will make you a better teacher and save you boat loads of time in the end. Try having them self-grade on your next formative assessment. Save yourself hours of grading time. With the right structures in place it is an effective tool. Alderman (2003) makes it perfectly clear when she states, “. . . motivation has to be explicitly addressed as part of instruction and socialization rather than treated as a by-product” (p. 19). Take her advice; take mine – teach your students to make decisions that will help them. Give them as many meaningful choices as you can, and provide the structures that will make any of those choices a success.
Grant,
ReplyDeleteDo you allow your students to correct themselves before they turn graded assignments in? I think self-assessment may be a good idea, as it has the potential to deepen learning. Plus, self-assessment with self-correction focus on mastery goals - which I prefer, rather than performance goals.
Other side of the coin: I have been at USAFA for almost 4 years (researching not teaching). USAFA has a stringent honor code. Each cadet's academic achievements are almost always individual and performance oriented. Such is their culture to promote NOT cheating.
Do you have something in place to ensure that students understand the difference between learning/growing and being dishonest?