Standard 5: Motivation and Management
It is crucial to keep students motivated and engaged in the classroom. At
Cynwyd, I have found that it is often times very difficult to motivate all the
students. Some students just want to get all their work done in order to be
completely finished or have some free time to work on something they enjoy.
However, as they rush through assignments, many errors show up in their work.
They are not reading the questions properly or even completely
misunderstanding the concept. It was difficult to plan lessons and activities to
motivate students and to tie them to something I know the students enjoy doing.
I tried my best to develop lessons that all the students would enjoy doing.
One of the lessons I included in this section was a lesson on adding and
subtracting money. At first glance, it seemed like a very dry, boring topic.
However, I remembered my cooperating teacher showing me a picture book
about money several weeks before I began planning the lesson. Therefore,
when I went to plan my lesson, I used the book as a read aloud, asking students
to count the amount that is referenced in the book. Students really enjoyed the
read aloud and I kept them engaged by having them calculate the amount in the
book. Students also interacted with other students during this portion of the
lesson to discuss their answers and how to calculate the total amount. For such a
dry topic, I was able to gain their attention and keep the students engaged.
This lesson also included both small group and whole group activity. I
started working with the class on the read aloud and calculating the amount of
money referenced in the book. Then, I split the class into two groups. I took one
of the groups, and Mrs. Brenner took the other group. In the group, I used small
whiteboards to motivated and engage the students. I first started with addition
and subtraction problems of what they know. Then I simply eased into adding
and subtracting money, showing how it is very similar to regular addition and
subtraction.
The other lesson that I chose to put into this standard was a Language
Arts lesson. It was a whole group lesson where students were continually writing
stories and continuing stories their classmates have started. It did not involve
much teaching but I included it into this standard because I found the students to
be extremely motivated. Students were reading the stories they were receiving
from their classmates and continuing them. They were actively engaged and
motivated. They were excited to read what others had written and add their own
twist to them. Individually, students were motivated to write because they knew
their part would appear in the story. As a group, students were also motivated to
write because they had to ensure the section they were writing fit into the story
and made sense. Even though it was a lot of reading and writing, students
enjoyed the lesson very much.