Making Learning Relevant to Student's Lives and Interests
In a recent post titled "Seven Thoughts on Implementing Positive Change in the Way We Teach our Students," (click on the title of this post to read it in its entirety) I discussed making learning relevant to students' lives and interests. This is a way to engage students and get them excited about learning. When that happens, the sky is the limit. But how to do it? Here's a couple of ideas tied to the teaching of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare that could be adapted for use with other works as well. I'm sure these ideas are not completely original with me, and that there are many of you out there who do these or something like them, if so I'd love for you to share your versions here on the blog. Please feel free to leave a comment below. 1. Texting We should all pretty much be able to agree that cell phones and texting are common to most high school students. They text each other all the time. So why not bring it into the classroom? After reading the...