Sunday, June 8, 2014
Purpose is the biggest point that is made in video. If someone feels there is not a tangible purpose, then why do it. This purpose could be a grade, make teacher happy, impress peers, keep parents off back. My ultimate goal is for my students to recognize/generate their own purpose. This is autonomy. Self motivation to do a task and do it well, because you want to master something. To me it is the biggest challenge we face. Students cannot connect to purpose, therefore why do it. If doing just for a grade, who really cares long term. If doing it to internally know that you mastered a task simply for the purpose of building a foundation for mastering other tasks, then we are to something. I am not sure how to connect this to my class, because I am consistently striving for this. However, making sure I have "grades" sometimes defeats my purpose. I often ask my students what does a grade mean to you. I get various answers, but rarely do I hear to show mastery and autonomy.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Dan,
ReplyDelete"Purpose" is such a difficult topic. I have so many students ask why, "why are we doing this?", and what is the purpose. It is so hard at times to not respond, you need it for ISTEP. I have often had students research the uses of the topic in the real world. It is amazing sometimes what they come up with. I also think that students don't fully understand grades. In my corporation, there are a lot of students, especially in the 6th grade, that just don't care about their grades. They don't understand that they can be a reflection of their mastery and autonomy. We try to teach them to have pride in their grades. It doesn't always work, but we keep trying.