“What’s the Point?” Three Tips for Making Content Relevant to Students Today
Yeah, I’m a TED Talk groupie—one of those people. Here is why: Poet/artist/actor Lemon Anderson’s recent ten minute piece, Please Don’t Take My Air Jordans, spellbinds the listener with rhyming couplets and answers the question, “Why does poetry matter?”
In age of video games and Facebook billionaires, I need to answer the question “Why does this matter?” more often and more convincingly for my students.
Any classroom teacher knows that there is an achievement gap in the country. In Washington state, according to a 2010-11 graduation report, 77% of white students graduate from high school in four years. For students of color (excepting Asian students) and low socioeconomic means, the graduation rate ranges between 51% – 66%. At Cascade High School, where I work, we want to reverse this trend.
In his best-selling book Drive, Daniel Pink says the keys to transformation are autonomy, creativity, and purpose. In this spirit, my principal Mike Hill encouraged me and a group of colleagues to create our own focus group to strategize how to shrink the achievement gap at Cascade High School. As a group, we’ve brainstormed many ideas to address the issue: home visits, after school programs, and curriculum and grading changes.
But my students don’t have time to wait for a big plan. I need to do something tomorrow.
Mahatma Gandhi said, “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him … We need not wait to see what others do.” So tomorrow, I’m going to begin to earnestly tackle the issue of equity in my classroom. Today, I turned to Success at the Core’s Teacher Development strategies to help me think about a solution. Specifically, I clicked through these resources asking, “How do I make my content relevant to the lives of my students? How do I make them want what I have to offer?”
In my search, I came across the video “Supply and Demand Made Relevant.” In it, teacher Mark Egger says (about math), “They’re not going to try, if they don’t see it’s going to benefit them somewhere in their future.”
This seven-minute video gave me some immediate strategies to start with tomorrow. Mr. Egger compelled me to address this question: Will students understand that the content is powerful just because you tell them it is? Of course not. As a teacher, my job is to know the content and know my students. The video also demonstrated three immediate steps I could take, right now, in my lesson planning to connect content to students’ lives:
- Ask students what they care about. Listen to their answers.
- Present the content in the context of what they care about. Give them authentic, real-world questions that they can answer if they understand the content I am teaching.
- Give them time to express their ideas and get excited about the learning process.
I’m not naïve. I know that my dilemma of providing equal instruction to all students in my class will not be solved in a day. But I am professionally and ethically bound to try. Using Mr. Egger’s three-step instructional strategy to build lesson relevance is a research-based tool I will use at 8:00 am tomorrow.
Aristophanes said, “By words the mind is winged.” I believe that. Tomorrow I’m going to endeavor, again, to connect my content to my students’ lives, and help give them wings.
And that’s why English class matters.
What’s your experience in making content relevant to your students’ lives?
You might also like:
4 Responses to “What’s the Point?” Three Tips for Making Content Relevant to Students Today
Send
Comments Policy: We pre-moderate comments on our blog before they are published. This means there will be a delay between the time your comment is submitted and it appears on the post. We reserve the right to reject comments that are rude, profane or non-germane to this post.
it is a good point for us all to take in.
Andrea,
I’ve found that linking my fourth graders’ writing to topics that are relevant for them has helped them produce more writing and definitely develop more voice in their writing. For example, at the beginning of the school year, when they’re developing their voices in our class, we read Judy Blume’s “Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing” and “The Pain and the Great One.” I use these texts about annoying younger siblings to set up an assignment for students to write about something or someone (not at school) who annoys them. The students love this assignment and have loads to say about the topic. And their papers are so fun to read!
I also tried out making an assignment relevant to students’ lives in science writing. For example, during our study of the human body, I have students write about someone they know who had a major illness or a broken bone. I have them write a feature article about the importance of healthy cells in our bodies, using facts, opinions, and their personal anecdotes. The assignment serves as a summative assessment for what they’ve learned in science as they apply research and facts, as well as what they’ve learned in writing. They also have to engage in higher order thinking as they reflect on what they’ve learned in the form of the opinions they’re including in their writing.
I’ve seen making content relevant for students make a great impact on student engagement and achievevement. Thanks for pointing us to additional resources on this topic on SaC.
Andrea,
Making high school science content immediately relevant to a teenager can be a challenge. There are concepts that I really struggle to make relevant. Sometimes I am really successful at being creative and planning a highly engaging and relevant lesson.
The surer route to a relevant lesson is to base the learning on student questions, rather that teacher lesson goals. I know, this is much easier said than done. However, whenever I’ve been able to do this, it is well worth the effort.
As teachers, we love to be in control of the learning environment but sometimes we have to let the learning get a little messy!
As we focus on student centered classrooms, relevancy is very important. Thanks for highlighting three simple tips to make it possible. Has relevancy become one of the 3 r’s of education? What are the other key tenants?