My Interesting Experience With Interest Approaches

o What happened?

Here's the scoop. This was the first lesson for a shop safety unit which included students being able to safely and effectively identify and use tools commonly used for home maintenance tasks. 

To get the students interested in something like tools, I figured it would have to be an interest approach that got students, you know, interested in the topic. To do this I laid tools out on a table and provided the following instructions:

o How does it relate to what I know about teaching and learning?

This was related to what I know about teaching and learning because I know that learners are interested by things that allow them to be creative. This activity allowed my students to be as creative as they wanted to be while also finding some humor in what we did which is also a principle of interest. Furthermore, finding a spirit tool is sort of fun and novel idea which even the name likely promotes interest for learning.

o What did I learn from the experience?

I learned that being creative is fun! It was fun to see what my peers created when given this prompt and I can only imagine what some of my future students will say. On a less positive note, I learned that it is incredibly important for a teacher to filter music before playing it in the classroom. When I reviewed my lab experience I noticed that the song I played for my students was incredibly inappropriate for the classroom.

o How can I apply this as an Agriscience teacher?

This activity and the lessons learned from it will be incredibly helpful when I am an ag teacher because I want to facilitate class content that students are able to engage in with genuine interest. Also I am going to hopefully have fun with my students by playing music... but it must be appropriate!