Zombies Ate My Lesson Plan! Updated on November 9, 2015 Alisha Adkins moreAlisha Adkins has a Masters in Education, 10 years of experience as in the secondary classroom, and has worked as an educational consultant. No matter how well constructed, no lesson can be effective if students do not engage with it. Engagement is the key. Being interested is the first step to learning anything. Unfortunately, repetition is necessary for learning, but repetition without novelty is boring, so the brain shuts down. Novelty, therefore, is essential because, by stimulating interest, it keeps the brain’s reticular activation system alert. In fact, research has shown that anything different stimulates interest and learning. Something as simple as writing in a different color has been shown to stimulate additional brain function in learners. So the most effective lessons are those with instructional value that are also fun, interesting, different, or surprising to students. So, should you really work the topic of zombies into your lessons once in a while?<\/p>\n
A Dynamic Instructional Philosophy: Make It Up! When having your students write, unless the purpose of your assignment is to strengthen research skills, don’t worry too much about if the content of your students’ writing is true. If what you are assessing is simply writing skills, there is no need to require the assignment to be factual. For instance, I once taught at a school where the administration mandated that every student was to write an essay about their grandparents. While perhaps a nice gesture theoretically, what I learned from this exercise was that most of my students had terrible relationships with their grandparents. Also consider this option when assigning autobiographies or asking students to respond to autobiographical writing prompts. Does it really matter if a student’s essay is about skinning a knee while riding his or her bike or about being drafted from middle school by the NBA? No, except that using a fantastical scenario may capture the student’s imagination, thus increasing the time and effort the student is willing to devote to the written assignment.<\/p>\n
If writing something imaginary makes the process of writing a more pleasurable experience for a student, don’t just allow it — encourage it! Another way to capture students’ interests is by breaking up the routine. Projects can be novel, fun, and engaging ways to reinforce learning or demonstrate mastery. Here are just a few project suggestions. However, doing so on a regular basis can be a challenge. But it doesn’t always have to be. One easy way to differentiate instruction is by giving students choices within their assignments. This allows them to work with the assigned material while choosing a method that interests them, thus maximizing their engagement while also accommodating their individual learning styles. For instance, after learning about the culture of a geographic region, students could choose to write a report, create an illustrated poster, write and act out a short play, or give a PowerPoint presentation on an aspect of the region.<\/p>\n
Just remember to give clear, specific directions so students know for what criteria you are looking! Research shows that discrepancy passages are an effective means of improving reading comprehension. Sign in or sign up and post using a HubPages Network account. 0 of 8192 characters usedPost CommentNo HTML is allowed in comments, but URLs will be hyperlinked. Comments are not for promoting your articles or other sites. I always prefaced autobiographical assignments with the assurance that students didn’t have to share anything with which they weren’t comfortable — or, indeed, could fictionalize the whole assignment, if they so chose. Autobiographical assignments are common in English classes, particularly as beginning-of-year \/ get-to-know-you assignments, and they are valuable activities as long as they are handled with sensitivity. While I like the idea of autobiographies and use autobiography as an ice-breaker tool in my online classes, we do need to be sensitive to the problems associated with disclosure of autobiographical information. Students may be uncomfortable in reporting about themselves and their families; students may be embarrassed; students may be shy, etc. We do need to create autobiographical assignments in ways that enable participation, but disable problems associated with disclosure. The problem: How do we do this? What a clever idea to ‘make up’ a grandpa! I’ve seen little ones devastated when they had to draw a picture of their family, when their family unit wasn’t like a picture book. It’s more than embarrassing; it can be heart-wrenching. I think your students are very fortunate to have you as their teacher! Impressive hub on Student Engagement.<\/p>\n
Can you buy those attitudes and efforts with financial incentives? Have you ever been a member of an organization that had a high degree of trust, commitment, and effort? Did that organization also evidence a large amount of cooperation, innovation, and unification (a feeling that everyone was working toward a common goal)? If so, what was the case? What, in your opinion, made all of that happen? Have you ever been a member of an organization that had a very low degree of trust, commitment, and effort? Did that organization evidence a very small amount of cooperation, innovation, and unification (where there was nearly no feeling that everyone was working together for a common goal)? If so, what was the cause? There are 4 Discussion Board Forums completed throughout this course. For each forum, you are required to post a thread of at least 350 words. You are also required to post a minimum of 1 reply of at least 250 words to another classmate’s thread.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Zombies Ate My Lesson Plan! Updated on November 9, 2015 Alisha Adkins moreAlisha Adkins has a Masters in Education, 10 years of experience as in the secondary classroom, and has worked as an educational consultant. No matter how well constructed, Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[11,13],"class_list":["post-428827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essay-paper-writing","tag-assignment-writing-service","tag-essay-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428827\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}