Monday Mustang Memo: relevance

Ideas in Education: ARCS Model

Everyone is motivated. There’s no such thing as an unmotivated person. What motivates and how one is motivated are what differ from person to person.

Some students may be motivated by good grades. Others may find the subject interesting. For some, it may be the desire to please. For the rest, however, it is our responsibility to motivate our students.

Several years ago, I came across the ARCS Model by John Keller. Keller’s model promotes a problem-solving approach to lesson design that breaks our ability to influence and motivate using four different approaches: Attention, Relevance, Confidence and Satisfaction.

Attention

Think of attention as the hook or tease, often used at the beginning of the learning process. This can include perceptual arousal which originates with novelty, doubt, or disbelief. Attention can also be piqued through inquiry arousal by presenting students with challenging problems.

Ideas: games, role playing, humorous stories, conflict, variety, real-world problems. In a math class, this may mean starting off with the word-problem or in a history class it may mean presenting the dilemma or controversy before the background information.

Relevance

We should strive to link learning to students’ lives. Keller suggests providing relevance by presenting objectives and the purpose of learning with specific and measurable examples of success. Since most learning builds on prior knowledge, try to connect new information with previously learned information.

When the material isn’t relevant to the students’ lives (yes, that is sometimes the case), focus on the other aspects of the ARCS model. Relevance can be increased by using Universal Design concepts and student choice. By allowing students to choose an instructional strategy to learn or demonstrate their learning, motivation will increase. Much to my chagrin, my daughter hates social studies and history, but when given a project that enables her to tap into her passions (art, music, theater, etc.) she excels--even in history. She definitely knows more about Alexander Hamilton than I do because of some little musical.

Confidence

Students need to believe in their ability to succeed. This requires scaffolding instruction and generating confidence by requiring tasks that are appropriately challenging. By informing students of the learning/performance criteria and individualizing the targets, we can build student confidence. Conversely, imagine being given a task that is impossible for most of us, like dunking a basketball and being assessed on our dunks. At what point would you give up? Would you even try?

Within this strategy we should encourage students to make progressive gains and measure their own learning. It’s important, however, that we avoid ambiguous statements like, “Do your best.” As students learn, we must provide feedback to eliminate confusion while focusing on progress and building stick-to-itness.

Satisfaction

The final component of Keller’s model is satisfaction. We want our students to be proud of their achievements and their learning. On the most basic level, the reward is meeting the learning criteria for an assignment or earning recognition from the teacher. Going a step further, the students may self-analyze their progression and build self-efficacy.

Sometimes the satisfaction may come from a life skill that is secondary to the content. For example, when assigning students to a collaborative learning project, establish a behavioral target for students and explain why it’s important. A second example: students may feel satisfaction learning how to use a technology. Students must feel as though the skills they are mastering will be useful for their futures.

Keller’s ARCS model doesn’t require a total reset because undoubtedly you’re already doing many of these things. I like using it as a reference or checklist for each individual lesson.

Important Dates and Information

Mustang Morning:

Request students for this week. Note that Monday was moved to Friday.
Check your Mustang Morning sessions for NEXT week.
Request students for next week. On Wednesday, February 20 we will copy the schedule and requested students for the next four weeks. If you want students only for a week, wait until Thursday to request the student.

Intent to Return (or not) here (Intent to Return) Due February 22.

This Friday is an A-Day with Long Lunch. See below.

February 20/21: Help Save the Next Girl Symposiums.

February 20: 9th/10th graders
February 21: 11th/12th graders
Split classes send students based on their grade level
Mustang Morning will continue

February 22: A-Day; end of interim period

Working Conditions Survey (state required: March 1 close)

Teacher Link: teacher.vaschoolsurvey.info Teacher Password: T312GAP

Staff Link: staff.vaschoolsurvey.info Staff Password: F312GAP

Field Trips and SOLs

February 21: Manufacturing Day @ PVCC

March 6th: UVA Apprenticeship Job Fair for Interested Seniors

Shout Out

Hats off to the our science department and especially Ms. Rowanhill and Ms. Dudley for their organization of the blood drive and UNOS (organ donor) presentation.

Thanks Ms. Meade for LoveFest!

Birthdays

February 21: Teresa Goodin, Paul Shepherd

February 22: Najwa Tatby

February 23: Heather Charles

Useful Information

Bell Schedules : http://bit.ly/MOHSbells

FAC Form

To add to Monticello-Outlook, School Calendar, PowerSchool Daily Bulletin

Morning Announcement Stream: http://streaming.k12albemarle.org/ACPS/links.htm

Announcement Request

Athletic team schedules, rosters, etc.

Teacher Handbook

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Student, Staff, Student of the Month Form

Worth Your Time

Is homework valuable or not? Look at its quality instead.

The brain-based benefits of writing for math and science learning

Schedule

A-Day Friday Schedule with Long Lunch

7:40-8:40

Zero Period

8:55-10:15

1st Period

10:20-10:55

Thursday’s Mustang Morning

11:00-1:00

2nd Period

Lunch	Class
1st: 10:55-11:35	11:40-1:00
2nd: 12:20-1:00	11:00-12:20

1:05-2:25

3rd Period

2:30-3:50

4th Period

Ideas in Education: Increasing Relevance

For most of my educational career, I taught World History to 1500. I’ll be the first to admit that this period of history isn’t extremely interesting or relevant to their 14 and 15 year-old lives. As such, I tended to focus more on the themes of history--the BIG ideas, if you will--than the minutiae. These themes--haves and have nots, identity, moral/religious codes, etc.--are what repeat throughout history and continue into our modern day lives; to me, this is why the study of history is important.

Of course, the SOLs still required students to know facts like that the Phoenicians were known for their trade of purple dye and cedar wood and their alphabet was a foundation for Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek alphabets.

As a teacher I wrote DORM on my board every day.

D: Do Now

O: Objective

R: Relevancy

M: Most important

I believe the DORM served both my students and me well. It forced us to focus on the objective, the relevancy and what was most important. We completed the relevancy section in parts: at the beginning of the class, during the class and at the end of the class. The most important portion, which consisted of a 1-3 sentence summary, was saved for the end of the class or homework.

Providing relevancy occurs before and during the lesson. Below are some strategies and ideas to ensure and increase student relevancy.

Strategy	Explanation of the strategy	In the Phoenician Example
Anticipation Set/Guide	Before teaching, get students to think about how the subject is relevant to their own opinions or ideas and how it may relate to something they already know. For example, before reading, you may have students read 5-10 statements and have them agree, disagree, or qualify each statement. This could be done individually or in pairs. After the reading or lesson, the students could discuss the same statements from either an accuracy perspective or based on the author’s perspective.	The do now for this assignment was Tally how many people were wearing red, blue, purple, green, yellow, black, and white. Then, work with a partner to figure out the “meaning” associated with each of the colors. Usually only a couple of students associated the color purple with royalty (this was in the days before cell phones/computers in classes where I could’ve had students look this up). Then I asked why would purple be the color of royalty? (We came back to that at the end of class.) We also talked briefly about where these colors natural dyes could come from (the most common guess for purple were berries).
Using Advance Organizers	Advance organizers, which can be graphic organizers, help students see how they parts of the unite are connected. An advance organizer can be distributed at the beginning of a unit (Grant Wiggins talked about completing concept webs throughout a unit, for example).	For this lesson, I provided students with a storyboard. The students would draw a picture and a caption for each part of the lesson with a focus on Politics, Military, Economy/Trade, Culture (these were themes that they were used to seeing).
Build Background Knowledge	Using mini-lessons to provide background knowledge before diving in is extremely important, especially for students who lack the background knowledge. Use mini-lessons for some or all students a couple of days before the lesson. These mini-lessons prime the brain. This would be a great use for Mustang Morning.	Several days before the lesson, I provided students with a Readers’ Theater script that I created for this lesson. Students were to read their sections for homework. The day before the lesson, we watched a short video about the Phoenicians.
Engage the students	As a rule of thumb, the drier or less relevant the subject, the more important it is that the we bring the subject alive for the students.	I chose to create a Readers’ Theater for this lesson. Each student had a role (or in smaller classes multiple roles). The students performed the lesson, reading and acting along the way. We had props (a sailboat, a fake tree, snail shells, beautiful purple fabrics, cedar wood, and scenery) as the students traveled throughout the Mediterranean. After each scene, the students stopped and completed their organizer. I carefully chose the roles in advance based on the students. I worked with and supported some of the students more closely.

After the Readers’ Theater, we’d complete the Most Important section of the DORM and we’d revisit the Relevancy section as well. We would discuss Why did purple become the color of royalty? To me, these were both great indications of the lesson’s effectiveness and provided me with great student feedback about the lesson and what was learned.

I knew this was a good lesson when students asked questions about the natural color of fibers and were encouraged to learn more. Comparisons were made between the Phoenicians and modern trade (ranging from comparisons to Japan, NAFTA, multi-national companies, etc.). Students also discussed the role of colors in culture.

For the Most Important, students often needed reminders about how to truly glean and summarize what was most important and were encouraged to look back at the learning objective and their organizers. Otherwise, I found that students tended to focus on some of the more trivial (see below) or on the parts that they played in the Readers’ Theater.

And just so you know: The Phoenician purple was one of the only bright dyes available to ancient civilizations. The sought-after dye, whose color often worn by royalty, was created from the extracts of marine snails. It required thousands of snails to produce miniscule amounts of the dye (reportedly 10,000 snails for 1 gram of dye). The snails were collected by the thousands, left out, and then boiled, which broke down their glands which secreted a protective slime. Needless to say, the dye was extremely expensive; a pound of dyed wool was worth a pound of gold. The exact nature of the chemical process has been lost in time but the manufacturing process dictated the shade of purple. Today there are still mounds of discarded snail shells that measure over 125 feet high.

The Phoenicians, who originally settled on the shores of the eastern Mediterranean, were skilled seafarers. Their trading routes took them as far as Britain, the Canary Islands, and India and they established outposts and later colonies throughout the Mediterranean. Carthage, ancient Rome’s enemy, was a Phoenician colony in north Africa. As their trade empire expanded, they became both importers and exporters, often serving as middlemen. Goods were bought and sold in a controlled manner with pre-set prices established through bargained trade agreements and trade treaties (often promising protection and open ports to the Phoenicians). In addition to their famed purple dye, the Phoenicians were most notably known for their exportation of cedar wood.

Important Dates and Information

Mustang Morning: Please remember to request your students for Mustang Morning for this week as the slates were wiped clean.

Showcase form due February 8.

Fire drill: Monday during 1A

February 14 (Lovefest) will be an anchor day. Friday will convert into a B-Day.

Technology Vetting: Essentially, teachers should be using this for websites/programs that are used classwide, especially any that require login information. It should also be used for other forms of media (films, for example).

County Bell Schedule Survey (closes Feb 1) : https://survey.k12insight.com/r/C3Zx2y