Wathall Synthesis CH.5 by Alexander Reinhardt

Keeping Students Motivated and Engaged

amreinha — 2025-03-29 04:10:32 UTC

There are three different categories I like to use to keep students engaged and motivated when in the classroom. First, I like to use relevancy and creativity in a topic, meaning if I am going over a lesson how can I make it more relatable to them and or more creative? The second one being adding participation in by group work, by allowing mistakes to happen. The third area to have students engaged and motivated is to have more inquiry and inductive reasoning when it comes to learning new content. The final area is to have lesson whole group discussion time.

Relatable Questions

amreinha — 2025-03-30 00:45:25 UTC

Depending on the lesson, having relatable content can look different based on the lesson you are on. In mathematics, having relatable content inside questions (such as word problems) where students can identify an everyday problem that in mathematics has a solution for it. This also adds a feeling of importance to different mathematics lessons students learn. In the one above, I found a model about a value of a car in dollars and over time it becomes a decreasing value. This is a good relatable representation as students in the future will think similarly about something like this since they will have a car (if not already).

Allow mistakes

amreinha — 2025-03-30 01:03:00 UTC

When students are allowed mistakes in class, students respond better to understanding content and trying again. Letting students have times where they get a problem wrong can build off of what they already know and what they are trying to master in the new lesson. I think of it in the same ordeal as sports, when athletes fail and or lose in games they must practice harder, practice more, and try new things to succeed in the future it is like anything else in life in which that if we were all perfect there would be no reason to grow.

Have students inquire/inductive reason more

amreinha — 2025-03-30 01:08:43 UTC

Building and inductive reasoning to the problems in a classroom can help with two things. First, it builds a better understanding to what we are learning about. If we can justify what we are learning easily then we can use the new knowledge learned in HW or on a test in the near future. The second area is critical thinking. Think about anytime you had a problem you didn't understand beyond the original foundation questions you tried, if you were able to inquire and try the problem even if you messed up you got a chance to see if you could understand the content in a different form. Once students are given this chance, and then learn how to actually do a certain problem it helps the new lesson stick more.

Less whole group discussion

amreinha — 2025-03-30 01:11:18 UTC

Have students spend more time in small group discussions or working together on problems rather than spending so much time on lots of extra whole group discussion. When you lecture too much in a class, students do not always have the entire lesson stick compared to splitting up the lecturing and reducing it at certain points.

Keep students on TASK

amreinha — 2025-03-30 01:14:16 UTC

Differentiate Students Learning

amreinha — 2025-03-30 01:19:34 UTC

Giving more types of ways to learn a lesson in which you can give students more choices to learn new content goes a long way when keeping students on task. When students are given choices based on how they want to learn, they feel apart of the environment and more respected with given a choice. I also see it as a way where students can express their own creativity path given with some bit of guidance through constructed choices to choose from.

Growth Mindset

amreinha — 2025-03-30 01:22:30 UTC

Thinking back to about allowing mistakes, this is a part of the foundation for a growth mindset. Students need more of a growth mindset to learn lessons better and also stay on task because if students do not have a growth mindset, then they become distracted and off task. Here is a website I found dedicated to different strategies and phrases to say to students to keep them in a growth mindset state.

Differentiation Continued

amreinha — 2025-03-30 01:27:00 UTC

Another thing you can have is a hint jar or hint cards, where students can get a hint what to do next in a lesson on different problems they might be working on. This is a better idea rather than walking a student through an entire problem unless it is necessary as many students lack confidence in different math lessons and thrive in others. Here is also some more ideas of what differentiation could look like in your classroom from prodigy.

The Importance of Classroom Structure

amreinha — 2025-03-30 01:30:13 UTC

Out of anything in this lesson, classroom structure has to be one of the most important things. I have seen some of the worst classroom structures and some of the best both being a student and a future teacher and if your classroom structure is bad it makes it harder for students to be comfortable in their surroundings and be ready to learn.