Teaching Reflections

Module 5 – Motivation and Instruction

April 24th, 2017

While it is important to understand that each student has a wide range of ability level in their academic learning, motivation, appropriate goals, assessment strategies, and various learning methods are all taken into consideration when providing instruction to all different types of students. “Motivation is usually defined as an internal state that arouses, directs, and maintains behavior.” (Woolfolk, pg. 476). With that being said, motivation is crucial when influencing a positive and enjoyable learning environment from students with various cultures, backgrounds, and learning abilities. As a future educator, I feel as though influencing a students learning with motivation is key to student success. Social cognitive theories of motivation will be placed into my future classroom for many reasons. One being that it is important for students be able to value a goal of his/her liking and to appreciate the overall outcome of the desired result. As a teacher, being able to set high standards (although they will be achievable based of off the individual) and believing in your students is key to success and effective goal setting strategies.

On going assessment such as observation and flexible grouping of students is also crucial to successful teaching. Student-centered teaching approaches such as one-on-one work with students and trial and error work best when planning adequate teaching. “An increase in course grades or doing well on examinations are commonly used measures, but there are others such as student engagement, self-assessed learning, and other objective and subjective measures of learning.” (Bradford, pg. 34). With student-centered learning, more and more student achievement and positive engagement is being statistically proven. Therefore, using this type of teaching in the classroom is necessary for a motivational, positive and influential goal setting, and an effective and successful classroom.

Integrating classroom design principles such as the Backward Design into your teaching strategies will keep you organized, knowledgeable about your content material, and understand what it is exactly that you hope for students to gain out of the end of a lesson and/or unit. By identifying your desired results (what is expected of the student), determining acceptable evidence (assessment, observation, practice of skill), and planning your learning experience and instruction (Weber, PowerPoint). will help you to better not only teach your subject matter effectively but show you as a teacher what students already know and/or what they can improve on to better their knowledge of the content. As attached below, is an example of a unit plan using the Backward Design method in a secondary physical education class:

Module 5 Online Activity

“The categories after Knowledge were presented as “skills and abilities,” with the understanding that knowledge was the necessary precondition for putting these skills and abilities into practice.” (Armstrong). Knowledge and comprehension are used in stage one to provide the student with a full and concise understanding of the sport education model of basketball. As listed in the model, students will understand and comprehend modified and authentic basketball play and continue onto applying these skills into a game of the sport with team mates (Stage 2 of the attached Backward Design). Again, while all students learn at various levels, taken into account were students views of learning and diversity (ability levels) and accommodations were taken into consideration such as modified games could be played if students felt the need to do so. Deciding what should go into a lesson or unit plan is important because as a teacher, you want the most successful learning outcome of your students. Making sure each detail is presented in your lessons is also important to sufficient organization which in turn will keep you knowledgeable and credible about your subject material.

The Backward Design I believe, is imperative to great teaching. By designing the unit that I did in physical education – Sport Education: Basketball, I felt as though the much detail and time taken into consideration when creating the framework really supported the goals in which I hope students are successful in. In the future, the Backward Design framework will be used throughout my teaching for a more efficient and successful teaching instruction.

References

Bradford, J., Mowder, D., & Bohte, J. (2016). You can lead students to water, but you can’t make them think: An assessment of student engagement and learning through student-centered teaching. Journal Of The Scholarship Of Teaching & Learning, 16(4), 33-43. doi:10.14434/josotl.v16i4.20106

Armstrong, P., (2017). Bloom’s taxonomy. Center for teaching: Vanderbilt University. Retrieved from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy/

Woolfolk, A. (2014). Educational psychology: Active learning edition. (12th Ed.). Pearson.

Weber, N., (2017). Educational psychology: 4/13: Module 5—motivation and instruction. PowerPoint. Retrieved from https://uww.courses.wisconsin.edu/d2l/le/content/3643387/viewContent/22978476/View

 

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