Juniors and motivation....what to do? what to do?

                Apparently I don’t understand juniors. I like them; I have developed as good a rapport with most of them as I have the freshmen I am with, but I don’t understand their motivations. Let me explain the situation. The juniors I help with are in an AVID class. In light of their upcoming PSATs and other eventual standardized testing (which the AVID program puts great import on for both scholarship money and college acceptance), my CT has been giving them vocabulary to learn and then be tested on. These lists are neither super long nor stupefyingly difficult; they are given in connection with worksheets that focus on use in sentences, antonyms, and synonyms. Students are given time in AVID class to do these sheets with a partner, and for the very first test we even did games and class activities with them. Despite every good reason, and every good opportunity, to learn them, the first test was less than impressive.

            In contrast, the Freshman honors class were given the same list of words--the same worksheets, the same class time to work on those sheets (though not the game and activity time)—and produced surprisingly better results. While discussing these results with my CT, several questions came to mind. Did the juniors do worse because they did not see the reason behind the test? After all, they have a more immediately relevant cause to motivate them than the freshmen do. They have also had two more years than the freshmen in the AVID program, which is supposed to teach them better organizational and study skills. Were they rebelling because they felt the vocabulary beneath them? I was totally mystified, so I mentioned these questions to my CT.

            I felt his answer was quite astute. He suggested that the juniors probably did not take the first test seriously because we were tackling a core subject task in a class that the students had comfortably come to assume was neutral and more akin to a study hall, or at least that is what they for some reason magically think once they hit junior year. Though AVID is not a study hall and is structured with activities all its own, I began to notice that the juniors came in expecting to have time to do other work or study for upcoming tests. Conversely, the freshmen took the vocabulary test more seriously because it is an expected part of their English class; it is the upcoming test. Their motivation is the grade (on a side note: the juniors were also being graded on the test, and it weighed heavier on their overall grade because there are less large graded projects in AVID than in an English class, but I do not think they took that seriously either).

            Before the next test, my CT explained to the juniors that these vocabulary tests were not meant to be busy work, but a specific way to prepare them for the rigorous testing they will face on ACT’s and SAT’s. First, he pointed out that most of them struggled on using the vocabulary in sentences. Then he followed by explaining that most standardized tests do not use definition matching, testing instead on the ability to use vocabulary correctly. The next test showed improvement, but not as much as we would like to see. Since then I have been meditating on how to motivate this class to apply themselves to this kind of test prep. Though they improved, they studied grudgingly in class, and, according to several outright admissions, not at all outside of class. I truly believe that Bomer speaks true when he writes that students need to find “ways of becoming involved and invested in literate tasks that are significant to them, not because they were born to love reading and writing but because of the ways the literate activity connects to other things in life that matter to them”(3). This connection leads to the kind of motivation these students need.

            So how do I create this kind of connection for vocabulary, or for test prep in general? It is not the most fascinating subject of study (for most people), but I have to make them want it and I’m not sure how. My instinct is to help them revisit the reasons they are in AVID, the reasons they want to go to college, and their personal goals, then provide them with hard proof of the benefits that testing well can have on their goals. This still is a nebulous idea with little substance and one that I want to look into further. I did some initial searching and found this website http://blog.socrato.com/make-satact-test-prep-fun-%E2%80%93-3-sites-that-can-help/ with links to test prep activities that seem to be at least a little more interesting. I still do not feel that this addresses the meat of the problem. I need to find resources that help me help students make connections that will motivate them. Please, if anyone has ideas, resources, or experiences, I would love to hear them!

Cheers,

Ms. Iseminger

Works Cited

Bomer, Randy. Building Adolescent Literacy in Today’s English Classrooms. Portsmouth: Heineman, 2011. Print

LIGHTS...CAMERA,...Cher!? Using music, art, film and poetry to connect to students

I love music; I love poetry; I may not understand art, but I enjoy looking at it. Our students—and most of us teachers—are media-based creatures. We enjoy sound effects and pictures with our stories and go crazy when someone creates a new dance we can watch on Youtube and eventually re-create with our friends on the dance floor. Pardon my rambling observations on humanity, but, like a child trying to collect the perfect pebbles for a mosaic, I have been trying to gather and arrange my idea-pebbles concerning writing, music, art, passion and reading.

Cher + The Most Dangerous Game =
"Bang! Bang! He shot me down!"

Let me begin with some personal observations. Apparently even really cheesy music amuses a classroom. My CT, in celebration of short story involving hunting with guns, randomly played a snippet of Cher’s rock-mix version of “My Baby Shot Me Down.” Despite the giggles and cries of “What is that?” the class was jokingly singing along with the next chorus of “Bang, Bang!” Besides creating a new joke amongst this particular class, this music moment created a flow of interest and energy that carried into our discussions of the short story.

            Change setting and move into various college courses I’ve experienced and witness the many class discussions brought on by works of art, photos of architecture, or a piece of poetry read aloud. Though these “media moments,” as I call them in my head, usually have some relation to the day’s topic, I most often remember my sense of refreshment (huzzah! Something new to look at!)and renewal of interest (I wonder how a picture of a log cabin relates to Puritan Print culture?) Even as a college student who accepts that classes may not always be thrilling, I perk up when we begin to make new connections from literature to other media.  

            Last week in my Theory of Composition class we mused on our goals as teachers of writing. I found myself writing passionately about writing passionately. I want my students to want to write, and I firmly believe they will not choose to learn how to write expressively unless they have something to express. This train of thought brought me to the idea that the wider a student’s exposure to the world and all of the glorious forms that Ideas take in it, the more unique their conclusions will be and therefore the more ownership they will take of their ideas and their ability to express their ideas.

            Serendipitously, the assigned chapter for this week came along like a little girl with a basket picking up my swirling ideas and showing me how to fit them together.  Chapter 2 of Noden’s Image Grammar addresses art and film as ways to “expand the artist’s eye” when writing. Specifically, by “recognizing the appeal of media to students, teachers can use art and film as tools” to enrich the writing process and awaken students’ senses (43). One activity suggested by Noden focused directly on writing about artwork while giving students freedom to choose which work of art to write about as well as how to express their ideas “in the genre of their choice” (44)—an approach which one teacher found increased the depth and complexity of detail in her students’ work. I feel such freedom and a little facilitation to allay students’ doubts about “doing it right” would also create that magical sense of idea ownership I want my students to possess.

            So my essential questions for this blog revolve around creative use of media in the classroom. How might I tie various media into my literature lessons and yet keep it relatable and exciting? Will creating idea ownership heighten my students’ desire to write well? How can I incorporate more Cher into the classroom? (just kidding).

            I certainly intend to dig deeper into Noden’s text, but I also want to search the web. I did find one interesting website so far. The National Writing Project website is always a valuable tool, but one particular article by Judith Jester is on my “to read” list. The article is titled “Of Paint and Poetry: Strengthening Literacy Through Art,” and the link is: http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/958. Besides finding more articles on how to incorporate media, I would also love any recommendations on student friendly sites for art, poetry (I love Poetry180), or music.

            More than anything, I suppose, I want to make sure that my students connect to what we are learning. However, some gratuitous Cher in the classroom might not go amiss. I wonder how my freshmen would react to a few bars of “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves?”  I’ll let you know how that turns out in my next post!

Because what is Cher without Sonny?
(I just had to!)

 Cheers,

Ms. Iseminger

 

Resources

Jester, Judith. “Of Paint and Poetry: Strengthening Literacy Through Art.” The Quarterly 25.4 (2003). NWP Online. Web. 4 Septemeber 2014.

Noden, Harry R.. Image Grammar: Teaching Grammar as Part of the Writing Process. Portsmouth: Heineman, 2011. Print