Creating emotional investment

 

Creating emotional investment: Students must be fully immersed in the experience, not merely doing what they feel is required of them. The “process needs to engage the learner to a point where what is being learned and experience strikes a critical, central chord within the learner.”

 This is grade 8 Maths in an IGCSE school. A class of about 14 students. The class in totally uninterested in learning in any way. I am creating a task that has an ‘emotional investment’ (Schwartz, 2012).  ‘Experiential learning is also built upon a foundation of interdisciplinary…learning’. (Schwartz, 2012, p.1). Since to make Maths emotional it is necessary to bring in ‘interdisciplinary work’, it is a project. The objective is to determine their grasp of the topic, Symmetry, and to bring them emotionally closer to Maths. Since the task is interdisciplinary, I am taking it as a project.

Project work

Content: Symmetry of 1 or 2 lines and rotation of any degree

Other subjects included: Art and English/Language

Objective:

1.      You have to design a logo. You have 2 choices:

• Design a logo that depicts your life. Or
• You are hired by a company. Design a logo for them. Decide for yourself what the company is     and how you will design a logo for them

2.      The logo should have 1 or 2 lines of symmetry.

3.      You have to also give a small description to explain why this is a justified logo, whichever option you choose, ‘a’ or ‘b’.

4.      Design the logo very artistically as you wish.

Timeline: Work at home by yourself. Mail me a snapshot of the work done on daily basis at my school id xxxx@xxx.

Rubric: You will be assessed on:

1.      Quality of logo

2.      Use of symmetry

3.      Explanation of the logo

4.      Artistic design of the logo

5.      Managing timeline.

Since this an adolescent group, I hope that the option ‘a’ would appeal to those who want to explore their own sense of growing identity. As ‘Erikson proposed that identity formation is the key developmental task of adolescence’. (Klimstra, Hale, Raaijmakers, Branje, & Meeus, 2010). Option ‘b’ is for those students who do not think too much and are practical minded.

I am including Maths content in order for it should have a ‘mixture of content and process’. (Schwartz, 2012, p.1).

• The description would inform me of the reasons for their choices. It would also give the linguistic students some space to explore their own thoughts.
• Art is my favourite exploration to connect to Maths. I believe it has the power to bring anyone emotionally closer to the subject. (Conner-ziser, 2017)
• The timeline is given so they can organize their work around it.
• The rubric would help them to stay focused and refer to it. Knowing that their language expression and artistic works will fetch them some marks would keep them even more emotionally invested. (Schwartz, 2012)

Overall, with a combination of Art, Expression, Discipline and Choice, I believe that this task would be emotionally immersive for the students to get connected to Maths.

 

Reference

• Conner-ziser, J. (2017, February 17). Color and Emotion: The Psychological Appeal of Colors. Retrieved from https://www.breathingcolor.com/blog/color-and-emotion/
• Klimstra, Raaijmakers, Branje, & Meeus, 2010. Identity formation in adolescence: Change or stability? Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2807933/Schwartz, M. (2012).
• Best practices in experiential learning. Retrieved from https://www.ryerson.ca/content/dam/lt/resources/handouts/ExperientialLearningReport.pdf