Meaningful Learning

I believe that when learning is meaningful and relevant to students, they get more out of the learning process and can have fun doing it.

Therefore, I try my best to think of ways to motivate and stimulate students to give them an added value. I combine technology, card and online games inside and outside of the classroom to that end.  

In order to make the process of learning literature more meaningful, I decided to have the students more involved in it. While teaching the poem Count That Day Lost, I encountered some confusion among the 10^th graders who could not really grasp the poetic language. One evening I watched a lovely news report about an Israeli English teacher, who did a project with her students to encourage them to do good deeds. I immediately felt that this was the opportunity to link the material learned in class to the students' reality. Ever since I showed the news report to the students, our good deeds project went viral. The students were asked to send pictures of videos of them doing something good to our Whatsapp group to make the day "well spent", as the poem learned in class suggested. Each student thought of an act of kindness to family members and passersby and tried to be creative. One student gave a flower to an old lady, another made breakfast for her little sister, while yet another student washed the floor instead of his mother; some others arranged chairs in the classrooms and more. Every time I got a new picture/video I was excited. The students enjoyed the process and made the connection between their good deeds projects to what we learned in class.

This experience was a proof for me that as a teacher it is essential to make learning meaningful and there is no limit to the ideas.