10: Interest

James addresses the child’s native interests in his tenth talk.  He proposes that : student interest is gained when using objects as opposed to speech or text.  A teacher demonstration of a concept or a ‘hands on’ activity completed by the student is a better way to gain student attention and interest in the subject matter.  James affirms this idea when he states, “If, then, you wish to insure the interest of your pupils, there is only one way to do it; and that is to make certain that they have something in their minds to attend with, when you begin a talk”  (p. 49).  He goes further to emphasize that effective instruction must be of relevant interest to the student.  My blog will discuss interest with relevance in regards to today’s high school student. 

There is a time and place for teacher led or direct instruction.  However, I believe these times are few and far between.  No longer can a teacher walk into the classroom and lecture from start to finish.  Students will lose interest and inevitably become distracted and thus leading to the distraction of others.  Before you know it, the teacher is basically talking to his or herself.  Among others, engaging activities, real world applications, and class discussions are instructional fixes to the blasé of direct instruction.   During the last couple of years, the math department has been encouraging the use of engaging activities during the course of instruction.  This is a result of a district-wide initiative posed to incorporate more activity throughout class time.  Examples of these activities are partner-problems, round-robin problem sets, and color match.  

I would like to point out a design flaw in activities provided to the teacher by the department.  Take for example, the color-match activity.  In this activity, the problems and answers are presented in a table.  There are usually 6-8 problem and answer pairs.  When a student solves a problem, they proceed to locate the answer somewhere in the table and color the problem and answer the same color.  While this activity has instructional benefits such as student self-discovery of calculable errors, it lacks a sense of relevance for the age of the student for whom the activity is directed.  A former student of mine, who at the time was taking a senior level math class, approached me one day after completing a color match.  He said, “Bloom, I get that we are trying to see if we got the right answer, but I am a senior, and I am a boy, and I don’t’ like to color.  What is the point of coloring it?” 

The goal of color match is to break up direct instruction and review or practice a concept in a short amount of time.  What are some other ways activities that would obtain this goal and be relevant to the age and maturity level of a high school student? 

William had morning
duty this week.