Motivation and Management
The two greatest ways that I worked to motivate and management active learning in the classroom were (1) through a combination of individual, partner, and group work, and (2) through choice. There were many times when students had to work on assignments alone. However, for the most part, a large amount of the activities I assigned required students to work in partners, what we called "pair-sharing" in class, where students peer-reviewed each other's papers, shared meaningful moments of learning with each other, and collaborated on assignments. Other times, students worked in small groups of three to five to accomplish a task or work on an assignment (an example of this is the body biography found under "Other Student Artifacts"). I believe this group work was key because not only did it compel students to motivate and encourage each other's learning, but it also emphasized the social nature to learning and its social application. In addition to this tactic, another way I worked to manage and motivate student learning was by providing an immense amount of student choice. In every single writing assignment, I gave students a great amount of space for personal freedom to choice their topics, their approach and form, their side of the argument, etc. By allowing student choice in writing, I hope to spark a love for writing that would breed more writing in and out of class.
