When creating a learning environment, I always try to be proactive. Because there were so many behavioral issues on my campus, I made my health class project based. For every chapter, students would get to do a project and I would always encourage them to present to content in their own way. I understand that everyone learnes differently and everyone's interest is piqued by different parts of the lesson so I always encouraged them to be as creative a they could be. Projects on the same chapter might range from students shooting a video, a student writing a rap, students acting out plays and even students interviewing other students, teachers, and campus administrators on the lesson content and wriiting as article. I always enjoyed how excited the students were to present their individual or group projects because it was their ideas, thoughs, and unique work. Of course, I would give them a rubric and there were things that had to be present in the projects but the were passionate about it because I gave them the room to express themselves. Not only did it give them room to express themselves, but it also gave them an opportunity to relate health content to their real life experiences. Once the content became real to them personally, I saw my students interest grow.
Passion, imagination, and constraint is important as well when delivering lessons. One thing that a lot of my students never did was plant anything so while learning about nutrition, my students were able to create their own community garden. When they were reading about it in a book, they could care less. Once they planted seeds, they wanted to go out and water them often and were excited when their plants started to grow. They weren't passionate about it in the begining, but the exposure made them super exited and they often wated to show other teachers the garden. When it comes to students taking ownership of their learning, the engagement has to be present to make it work and it made class so much fun for the tudent and especially for me.
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