Activity Summary Sample

Summary of the Day’s Activities

At the beginning of class, students were told to get their assigned folders. Inside of said folders were progress reports based on the previous week of instruction. Students were asked to write a SMART goal based on their grade, meaning that they were to give a specific, measureable goal for next week’s progress report. Some students did not write anything at first, which prompted Botts to explain that the SMART goals were part of their grade as well. After writing their goals, students were given a warm-up activity through the Elmo where they were to subtract two polynomials. All of the students wrote the problem down. Some of those students proceeded to solve the problem while others stared at their paper until

Students were initially confused by the activity, but after asking Botts for clarification on how to proceed through the activity, they began to move around and search with slight interest. At one station, one student called another student dumb, within earshot of Botts, and was not acknowledged. No reward was given for completing the activity other than a complete symbol circle on their activity

When the students were given their progress reports, Botts made it clear that this grade was a reflection of their work in the class; less work means a lower grade. The use of grades as an incentive was in the the hopes of fostering an intrinsic motivation within the students, but, when some students did not write any SMART goal on their report, they showed that they were not very motivated by their grade. Even Botts mentioning of a grade being attached to the goal was not enough to encourage them to write something. This may be because of some confusion about how to write their goal or what type of goal they should have, but I feel that, for the most part, the refusal to write a goal was a show of apathy. I do not think that grades are enough of an incentive with this