Relationships, Relationships, Relationships

I would like to share this Nathan Wallis's video interview that we watched during our staff meeting at Glen Taylor School. Nathan Wallis is a Neuroscience Educator & Director of X-Factor Education.

I believe that setting up positive and respectful classroom norms, creating feelings of trust and safety for students are extremely important and definitely worth teachers' time and effort. The high-quality relationships are at the foundation of students' deeper thinking and engagement.

Motivation and Cognitive Engagement in Learning Environments

Reading: Motivation and Cognitive Engagement in Learning Environments

Blumenfeld, P. C., Kempler, T. M., & Krajcik, J. S. (2006). Motivation and Cognitive Engagement in Learning Environments. In R. K. Sawyer (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of: The learning sciences (pp. 475-488). New York, NY, US: Cambridge University

Press.https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232418824_Motivation_and_Cognitive_Engagement_in_Learning_Environments 

Synopsis

In this reading, the authors briefly review the literature on motivation and cognitive engagement and discuss how the key features of learning environments are likely to influence them. They indicate some challenges for students and for teachers, which may have negative effects on motivation and describe strategies for meeting these challenges.

Motivation

When we think of student engagement in learning activities, it is often convenient to understand engagement with an activity as being represented by good behaviour (i.e. behavioural engagement), positive feelings (i.e. emotional engagement), and, above all, student thinking (i.e. cognitive engagement) (Fredricks, 2014).

I'm constantly trying to target all three types of engagement. I clearly see that project-based learning fosters student motivation and, as a result, student engagement. Reflecting on my practice, I see a big shift in my understanding of how to motivate and get my students intellectually, emotionally and cognitively engaged. However, I believe that personal and professional learning never stops, so I like to read more about this aspect of pedagogy and implement successfully-proven practices in my classroom.

How will it help me? How has it helped me?

Interestingly, the authors identified the same challenges that I face and have to meet in my daily work. They talk about using students' interests and the importance of incorporating topics that students find interesting (dinosaurs, space, etc). The challenge for the teacher is to make sure that while students are working on these topics, they focus not only on seductive details but the new and essential learning is happening. My role as a teacher is to guide my students and create meaningful and purposeful learning experiences that have value and cater to my students' interests and their needs at the same time. Relatedness is another aspect that contributes to student engagement. Our school values of FIRE (Fun, Integrity< Respect and Excellence) are extremely important as they allow my students to feel safe and appreciated during their learning experiences. This promotes collaboration, which in turn results in a higher level of cognitive and emotional engagement. Another challenge for keeping students cognitively and intellectually engaged is a lack of skills and knowledge.

So What?

To overcome these challenges, I will continue to create a positive learning environment, use a cross-curricular approach and some of the ALL/ALiM strategies e.g:

• Plan for teaching/learning
• Frontload topic-related knowledge
• Ensure that the learning environment is safe for sharing ideas.
• Develop students' confidence to present their ideas, knowing that they will be listened to and valued.
• Have a shared understanding that mistakes are an important part of learning.
• Building up their topic-related vocabulary
• Support students to communicate their ideas. (Maths talk strategies e.g. revoicing, wait time, etc) 
• Use of technology to enhance their learning 
• Foster and maintain students' interests

Looking back at 2019 LCS projects

Description - 'Learn Create Share' student-centred project learning. 
In week 1, I chose to read the book "Chinese New Year" as it was the beginning of the Chinese NY celebration. I hoped that my learners would ask many questions about Chinese traditions and the Chinese calendar. To be honest, I didn't expect that our learning would flow like a mountain stream with many unexpected turns. Following their interests, we first learnt about dragons using multimedia texts. Then my students noticed that the dragons looked like some extinct dinosaurs and we had to investigate more to be able to compare and contrast these creatures. After that, we ended up talking about palaeontology (later on, this led us to explore birds, etc).

 

Significance
Cognitive engagement is defined as the extent to which students’ are willing and able to take on the learning task at hand. “When children come home talking excitedly about the latest issues they are grappling with in class, this shows that something important has kindled their desire to know more. When students want to bring resources from home that contribute to the class study, do extra at home for the sheer pleasure of it, offer to lead a group of peers, start contributing in unexpected ways, make suggestions to the class on how to improve something or want to stay in when the bell goes because what they are learning is just so absorbing, then we know that students are taking learning to heart. We know that they are curious and inspired.” (Connecting Curriculum, Linking Learning, 2013, by Barbara Whyte, Deborah Fraser and Viv Aitken)
That's exactly what was happening in my class! My learners, their parents and friends were all excited and engaged in our learning.

   

Learning
Reflecting on my teaching practice, I believe that this project was successful because I was teaching throughout the project—not teaching and then doing the project. Every aspect of learning was purposeful and meaningful to my learners. They wanted to read and write to be able to find out what was interesting to them. The learners decided to find out what dinosaur was the most popular - we conducted statistical investigations learning how to collect, sort out and display data. The students asked how long is 30 metres (the average length of an Argentinosaurus) and we went to measure an imaginary dinosaur on the court learning about non-standard and standard units. During this project, I used a cross-curricular approach and a range of deliberate acts of teaching in flexible and integrated ways that led to the success of our project and increased my learners' cognitive and intellectual engagement.