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Lisa, I have also found that fun video's or activities are a great way to pull kids in.  This is what they really seem to remember.  Even with my own children, when I ask what they have done in school that day, they reference the fun activity.  When I ask why they did that activity they are able to then state the learning that took place during that day.

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I like what Gail said about the off topic conversations.  I have used this when students are upset or frustrated to get them to think about something else and calm down.  This way they can revisit the problem when they have calmed down.

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Although I don't teach in a classroom right now, I have found that the more you connect with students personal experiences, the more that they will buy into the learning.  Finding books that pick up themes that the students are familar with or have experienced in their own lives allows them to make better conncetions and want to complete the work.  They are better able to take something from the classroom learning.

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I love teaching math because you could do things like use kids' names in the word problems, have them make geometric shapes from paper like cones and cubes to help them understand how to count sides, corners, diagonals, etc.,. Math is so easy to make relatable to their world. It's trickier with algebraic concepts, but it can be done with some of them.

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I really like the discovery activities. Handling objects and trying to figure out their connection to the book they are about to read, or the skill they are about to work on, or the country they will learn about. Encourages problem solving, personal and real-life connections, and making predictions.

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I agree with Chrissy that the kids need to feel that you are passionate about what you are teaching. As a resource teacher going in and out of classrooms, often after the lesson has started, I get sucked into the lesson when the teacher seems excited and cares about what they are saying and doing. The students are sucked in too, as most of them are on task and participating. Games and friendly competition are also good ways to engage students, For example, when I teach vocabulary, after a few days I put words and definitions on sentence strips and scramble them. As a drill, I have three students take turns unscrambling them and matching the words with the definitions. I time them with a stopwatch and tell them their time in minutes and seconds. I have the other students tell them if they are correct or if they need to fix any of their matches. We do this for a few days until every student has a turn. They love trying to beat each other's time and accuracy while internalizing the vocabulary words and their meanings.

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Agnes,

I love your ideas. Every time I walk by your room, it looks like so much fun in there. I can hear your different voice levels and like to way you work with the kids. Great ideas for keeping them engaged in a subject that was never fun for me!

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Lisa,

Using riddles and games is a great idea. It kind-of hides the fact that they are learning. I use a little question, answer, basketball game that really keeps them motivated. I may stop by to ask you more about how you do the jumbo game.

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Living in Arbutus, I find that many of our students either are involved in recreational and/or travel sports or they have favorite sports teams. Since I seem to be the only one in my classroom who LOVES grammar study, when I do teach grammar concepts, I try to pull students in with sports-related sentences/activities. In the article it states, "students diverse backgrounds, talents, interests, etc enrich our schools and our lives." Sometimes I pull an off-topic discussion on purpose to keep students engaged by being able to talk about themselves, share stories, and see similarities among classmates. Then I manage to pull it all back into the lesson. These sentences and discussions where students share make everyone "equal" on the learning scale.

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Denise,

I think having students interview parents about percentages sounds like a great way to make their learning meaningful and personal. It also would help foster conversations at home about what the student's are learning at school

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Lisa, I like how you use riddles or optical illusions like the mirror video to grab student's attention!

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Erica,

I like the "cheer" idea. Science vocabulary is always difficult to teach. It can be like teaching a foreign language. Thanks for your efforts.

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Chrissy, I wish I have pi day too.  Amber, I am happy to hear that is a celebration here. I remember when Milt Dorsch use to celebrate this special day..

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Chrissy, I wish I have pi day too.  Amber, I am happy to hear that is a celebration here. I remember when Milt Dorsch use to celebrate this special day..

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Sometimes science celebrates May 4th ( force be with you) Great for a physics class.

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Agnes,

I think that is great to make math problem real to students. Using names in problems or hight interest trivia or facts like Michael Phelps facts must be engaging to the students. Fun!

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Making material authentic to kids is important for them to want to learn. I like to use games to learn vocabulary. Science vocabulary is quite challenging to students. It can be quite content specific and that makes it difficult. Word games I use include, jumbo where the definition meaning is mixed up and when working with a few other students the students have to figure out the meaning then find a clue in a scavenger hunt. It takes a bit of time to play this game but the students do remember it. They work with others, move to find clues and create a race with their peers.

I also try to find discrepant events that help to make kids think about a science topic and how that works. I found a fun house video where it looked like someone was walking on the ceiling. It appeared that way because of reflection of light using mirrors. It was fun for kids to try and figure

I like to use riddles too.

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Denise,

I love your bag idea!  I'm going to think about how I might be able to twist that into something useful in math.   Maybe I could bring in plants and zombies characters and students could make up story problems.   Gotta think more about it this weekend...

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Denise,

I liked reading about your involvement of parents.  I have not done that in awhile but have also had good experiences doing it in the past.  It makes parents aware of what their students are learning and can help them extend learning at home.

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Making math meaningful can be tricky because the text's "real world" examples are often scenarios that our kids cannot relate to.  I like to use my student's names (and other teacher's names) in problems.  Sometimes, I can turn errors into jokes such as the ridiculousness of spending $70 on bananas.  I try to watch for news stories that I can relate to our current topics.  Athletes' multi-milliion dollar salaries/fines,  Michael Phelp's and his competitor's close (decimal) times, and temperatures dropping below zero are things AMS kids can relate to.   I try to keep their attention by varying my voice levels, using hand motions, and facial expressions.

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Erica,

I love the idea of creating working definitions that relate to their own lives. Going a step further with making up a cheer to go with the vocabulary work sounds fun, and would help those kinesthetic learners. I would like to see some examples to help me implement that in Health. It is really great you can sometimes see them making the motions during tests to help them remember the vocabulary!

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Amber,

I am jealous that you own pie day and get to bring in pies for students to eat. Haha. When I was in math, I think I benefited the most from being allowed to choose the questions I wanted to answer during independent time and working with a partner to help clarify my understanding of the lesson. Even though math might be more limited in the type of visuals I might use, there's a lot of ways to manipulate student learning to help them feel successful.

Now that I think of it, you could also use pizza for fractions, m&ms for counting sorting, etc... I think I should have been a math teacher so I could just eat all period long.

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Denise,

I love the idea of having students guess how the items in the bags are related to your books. I think I might try that for some of the readings we do in class. This year, Logan introduced me to the "mystery box", and when we introduced the rain forest unit, he used the spices and food to spark interest and get students thinking about what we were going to learn about.

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Lois,

I like your discussion about meds.  Kids LOVE to talk about themselves and allowing them to make things more personal leans towards making the material more meaningful. In our ecology unit, I have asked the students to discuss what they and their families due to be GREEN. The students got quite competitive, almost like it was a completion as to who could be the greenest. I end the competition by asking them to work with partners to come up with a plan to get everyone to go green.  That was a challenge... asking them to plan how to enforce their green efforts. I like in the book (p 21) how the teacher points out the importance of standing back and listening to your students interact with one another. It gives the teacher insights into the needs, strengths, and challenges of the students.

Your paper tents and "My Visions" probably fill you in on those needs, strengths and challenges from Day 1.

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Danielle,

I like how you let the students explore the materials before telling them what to do with the materials. I did that in science today and was pleasantly surprise to hear what they already knew.  I think the students were surprised too. It allows me to alter the lesson to a higher level.  Instead of having the students research the topics, I can have them come up with questions to "stump" other groups or draw diagrams.  This makes the lesson more meaningful to the students and more fun too.

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In science, some of the vocabulary is alien to the students.  They have trouble pronouncing the words not alone defining the words. I engage the students to discuss the new words presented to them with a partner before they go to resources to see what they actually mean. Sometimes the students discover they more than they think.  We will make working definitions that are relative to their own life with the hopes that the words will be easier to remember. Sometimes, we go further to make diagrams on paper or verbal cheers to use as definitions.  I find that this helps them remember the words as more than just a definition.  It also is rather comical to see them quietly go through the motions when they are testing :)

This is one way I make the material authentically meaningful to the students.

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Denise, that book club activity is great!! Not only is it fun, like a game...a challening one, it forces the students to utilize their critical thinking and application skills without even realizing it!!

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Chrissy, I am jealous of all the cool things you can do with bringing in items from the areas of the country/religions you are teaching! In math, we have visuals, like 3-D shapes and life sized number lines or graphs, but I can be honest and say that is not as cool!

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Danielle, I like the idea of letting the students explore the material for a few minutes before you use them. I think it might give time for them to ask questions and to make personal connections before you got started on the actual lesson. I recently used a pamphlet about different drugs and think if I had done that it would have been helpful. I could say something like, "Please spend a few minutes looking over the pamphlet briefly before we begin. If you have any questions or comments relevant to the pamphlet please raise your hand." Thanks for the good idea! f

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In Health students begin by self assessing every part of their health-physical, social, emotional, and intellectual. Then they are encouraged to set goals based on their self assessment. During every unit I encourage students to use what they are learning to incorporate into a personal goal. For example, during the drug abuse unit I encourage students to make it a personal goal to resist negative peer pressure or other temptation to abuse drugs.

On their self assessments many students have the same areas that they indicate they need improvement in. When I cover those topics I let them know I noticed that and it helps them be more interested. (for example, problems getting enough sleep, not having someone to share feelings or problems with, and problems handling anger to name a few)

Every topic in Health lends itself well to authentically engaging students. For example today the topic was medicine. One activity was to list medicines that they knew of. When sharing their lists many shared that they took certain medicines or their parents, siblings, or friends did. They enjoyed sharing and many participated.

Also, since I have a new set of students each quarter I have them make name tents. Inside is a paper titled "My Vision" There are numerous starter statements....By the end of the day I want to have....... By the end of the month, year.... five years from now... and more. I learn a lot about the student and try to make connections between what I learn about them and to the health topic for that day.

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In art, I try to connect every project in some way to the student's interests. If there are opportunities for students to make their artwork about something they find personally meaningful, they are usually more engaged and care more about the final product.

I also try to allow students opportunities to experiment with new art materials before we use them. Giving them time to freely explore the material, even for just a few minutes, allows them to make discoveries about the material on their own. The information about the process or how to use the material that I provide afterwards can help reinforce some of the information they already began noticing about the material independently.

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Chrissy, I love the idea of bringing in actual items to help with understanding.  Ellen McCoy and I have a student book club that we hold over the summer.  Each week for 4 weeks the kids read a section of the book we've provided.  While they're reading, they have a bag of items that they are challenged to figure out why we have included in the bag of things.  When we meet the next week, we lay the items out and take turns summarizing the section and saying why an item was included.

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Multiple examples of how a topic/skill relates to a student's life helps them to learn the skill better.  When I taught math I not only gave examples of why they needed to know that particular skill, but also had them give examples of why they needed the skill.  I once had them interview a parent about why it was important to know how to find the percent of a number...some of the responses were very funny!

I've also used their names in word problems, which seems silly, but it sometimes gets their attention.

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With mathematics, we have to teach both meanings behind the vocabulary and skills that we teach. It is important for students to know the true terminology but I, of course, provide alternate definitions for these terms. When possible, I also provide sketches, diagrams and any other helpful visual or 'trick' that I can.

Also, as we work through each lesson and unit, we are fortunate because math is very relatable to the real world. Many of the scenarios in the word problems are relatable to the students' real lives, directly or indirectly.

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With World Cultures, there are so many abstract concepts we discuss that can really confuse students, so I think it is a good idea to make concepts and activities more relevant to students. I learned during my student teacher experience that by combining your lessons with visually appealing objects or pictures , this can help students gain a better understanding of whatever topic you are teaching. I hope through this booktalk, I can also learn some new strategies from other people posting! :)

During my lessons on Islam, I have one of my Muslim students bring in their prayer mat, prayer beads, and other paraphernalia from their religion to show students visual examples that we've talked about in class. During my rainforest unit, I go to the Asian food market and get samples of exotic fruits, spices, and coffee that could be found in the rainforest. I usually have my kids try a small piece of "real cocoa", 60% or more to show how chocolate is processed and tastes differently after it is harvested.

Additionally, the chapeter also talked about how teachers need to remain passionate about what they teach. Each year, I try to change one piece of my lesson so that I don't get bored teaching it. For example, I  might find a short video clip to include, or take the students to the computer lab and have them research about our topic. These little adjustments each year help me to feel excited about teaching everyday.

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How do you make material authentically meaningful for your students?

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How do you make material authentically meaningful for your students?