A statement presented was that not all students realize the importance of believing in effort (Pitler et al., 2007). Just this week my high school students in an advisory class won their second, all school competition. They cannot believe they will be eating breakfast in class as a prize for winning the competition. The most common statement was, “We didn’t even try that hard.” This will be the perfect opportunity to introduce Excel spreadsheets and graphing to demonstrate how much time and effort is being put into a project and the results of that project. This will help the students to make the correlation between effort and achievement.
Homework can be beneficial if used in the correct context. There should be a clear cut homework policy made by the teacher and a distinct purpose and outcome of that homework (Pilter et al, 2007). Homework should not be endless worksheets without specific purpose. For many subjects there are a variety of software and websites available that can make practice learning more interesting and varied.
I teach Home Economics. To my knowledge there is no software or websites available to help teach life skills so I want to start deferring back to using the Excel program and using graphing and charting to show progress in student learning. I think my parents will support me in my quest to have students learn housecleaning skills. Parents will be given a rubric to grade student’s cleaning and students will be timing each task and how long it takes. Using a chart they can graph how quickly and efficiently they learn to do each cleaning task. The idea is for the length of time to accomplish a task to decrease as the student becomes more proficient with the household task.
Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology and classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
About Me
- cwwade
- Midwest, Illinois
- I am a teacher of Home Economics at the High School level and breed Boer Goats. Pictured is my daughter and Wackberry Hill Butterscotch. They won Sr. Meat Goat Showmanship at the 2009 Illinois State Fair.
4 comments:
Cynthia~
I really enjoyed reading your post. I agree with you, many students do not understand the concept of effort. I am glad that you will have the opportunity to introduce the concept of effort and have students track their effort versus their achievement.
You brought up a good point with the quote about homework. I know my teachers simply assigned homework and there were no questions asked; we just knew we had to do it. I like the idea of setting up a homework policy and having a distinct purpose for homework. Once sharing this with students, I am sure they will see more of a reason to complete the assigned work instead of thinking they just have to do it.
I hope you Excel program works for you within you Home Economics class. I am sure your students will enjoying viewing the results. I bet your students parents will enjoy you for this also.
The statement that they “didn’t even try that hard” has made me wonder if the reason why students don’t try hard is because they are afraid of not succeeding and thus wasting all that effort. Sometimes I think that we forget that our students are growing up in a world that is really harsh. They are constantly being bombarded with the need to fit in. If they try and find that they don’t make it on the first attempt that can be pretty devastating. I think that your explanation about using a spreadsheet program could be used to help encourage our students since they would be able to see the times when they really put forth an effort and they succeeded. Plus, they would able to see how they are growing in the process.
Jessica,
My parents are wonderful. They share stories from home. One student used baking soda instead of baking powder in the biscuits. Another student used Listerine to clean the toilet. The reason for doing this still makes me laugh.
James,
I am finding in the freshman the fear of not succeeding. Unless there is a guarentee of a payoff they will not put out the effort. I'll continue to monitor and watch their progress.
Post a Comment