Have you ever heard (or said) something like “I want to challenge my students”? I used to think that and say it all the time. I was thinking about challenge and rigor last week. Interestingly enough, I found old newsletter by Ian Byrd and his message was just what I had been thinking about!
Let me summarize and add some thoughts:
When faced with yet-another worksheet, students don’t long for something “more challenging.” When they’re bored at school, they don’t hope for a “challenge” to come along.
“Challenging” is the wrong goal.
Consider this: you can create a “challenging” task that is also boring and uninspiring that it kills kids’ interest in the topic. You can assign a “challenging” fill-in-the-blank worksheet, a “challenging” true/false question, or a “challenging” timed math test. Sometimes “challenging” can impede learning.
What Does “Challenge” even mean?
• (n) problem, difficult task, test, trial
• (v) disagree with, dispute, take issue with, protest against, call into question, object to
• (v) test, tax, strain, make demands on; stretch, stimulate, inspire, excite
Yuck!
“Challenge” has some seriously negative connotations. Yet… those last three words (stimulate, inspire, excite) start to get at the true goal. We all want “inspired” students, but we don’t want
them to be “strained.” We want an “excited” class, but don’t want learning to be a “trial.” We hope kids are “stimulated” by our lessons, but not “taxed.”
So, what’s a better word? How about interesting ?
A student who is interested will work over the weekend simply because they want to know more. An interested student is intrinsically motivated. They come back on Monday having kept at it all weekend.
Great teachers make lessons interesting – not merely challenging. Their students are surprised when the bell rings because they were so interested! They will even stay after
school…by choice. WHAT?!!
When faced with boring schoolwork, students long for something interesting. And here’s the bonus: if it’s interesting, you get challenging for free! Yippee!!
So let’s make “interesting” our first goal. And then, once kids are motivated and excited to learn, they’ll take on the challenges.
What Is “Interesting” Like?
First of all, you don’t get to say, “but this topic isn’t interesting.” That’s a copout.
EVERYTHING is interesting – we just have to fing the right angle.
Starting a lesson by saying “today we’re going to learn about X” is not interesting! We need to set up the drama, conflict, and ambiguity right from the start.
Here are a few ideas:
• Which is more powerful, the numerator or the denominator?
• Rather than just memorize rays vs. lines vs. line segments, ask which is the longest or which has more points on it? Then we can ponder the nature of infinity.
• What would Darth Vadar think about parabolas?
• What would tangent think of sine or cosine?
• What happens when dividends talk about how they feel about divisors?
• Let’s write a story about how one fraction has to disguise itself to fit in with a group of unlike fractions.
The possibilities are endless! I'd love to hear your thoughts 😀
Comments