Friday, August 7, 2015

Term 3 - Journey to engagement & ownership

This term the two words that come to mind when I consider the next part of my journey are engagement and ownership. At this stage I have the structures in place for my students to be able to identify where they are working at within a SOLO based rubric for mathematic strategies. But I need my students to fully engage with it in order to get results.

Previously I have had my students complete problem solving tasks, then use the Steps to Success rubric to identify what level they are working at and what they need to do next in order to move up a step. The main constraint to this is that the students simply find it just another thing to do and another thing that they can't really be bothered with. When thinking about this issue, I think engagement and ownership are the keys to enabling students to use these steps. If I can get my students to take ownership of their mathematics learning then it would hopefully change this attitude. If students were aware of what level they are at, and then feel personal responsibility to get themselves to a higher level, then lack of engagement would hopefully not be such an issue. Whilst ownership is the ideal goal I think there needs to be other goals/motivations in order to achieve ownership.

This term my focus is to get students more engaged and take more ownership within mathematics. I have a couple ideas of how I could use competition based strategies to get students to engage in their Steps to Success with the hope of their attitude and commitment to learning mathematics improve.


2 comments:

  1. This cool reflection popped up on my Google+ account Ben and I thought I would let you know I read it :). Engagement is certainly a key factor behind student ownership. It sounds like you are exploring some neat ideas, particularly in maths. looking forward to hearing the journey and outcome!

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  2. I am pleased to see you exploring the engagement and empowerment (called agency by many) of our learners. This is important for every child, but for our learners who are battling into a head wind at every step of the way, this is particularly important.

    Dorothy

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