Portfolio of Jan Abernethy

2b Establishing a Culture for Learning 

 

Students hear the words "intrinsic motivation" often and they know what the words mean. They understand that they have the power to control their grades. Each Monday, students are given the following: a goal sheet with all assigned work work for the week, a grade sheet showing current grades, and a missing assignment sheet (if they are missing any assignments.) Students know where to go to get their assignments. It is written on their goal sheet, and there is always an extra copy of the goal sheet provided on edmodo if they happen to lose the goal sheet. All worksheets or workbook pages can also be found online, so if they forget something at school, they can access it at home. Students feel empowered by this and begin utilizing this power very early on in the school year. There are always bonus ideas provided at the bottom of the grade sheet for students who would like to boost their grades.

 

The goal sheet also frees me as the teacher to teach on a differentiated basis. Students always have work they can be working on while I am working with other students. In addition, they can never say they have nothing to do, because we have so many websites and blogs, they can always be working posts for those and they all take pride in that. The weekly reading response is something that I allow students to work on in cooperative groups. I don't grade it, yet students put more work into it than anything else they do all week. I think part of it is the working with friends, and I think part of it is the exploration of electronic tools, but I think the biggest part of all is the pride they feel when they share their project with the class at the end of the week. The best part for me is while they are working on their projects, it gives me the time I need to work individually or with small groups to truly differentiate my instruction.