Student engagement with schoolwork rests on whether that work connects meaningfully to students' personal goals and lives outside of school.
Introduction
Introduction to Meaningful Work
An introduction to motivating learning conditions from PERTS.
An introduction to the learning condition Meaningful Work
Chapter 1: Help Students Discover the Personal Relevance of Learning
Teachers play a crucial role in helping students discover the personal relevance of their schoolwork—to see the work they’re doing as valuable and meaningful
Strategies that help students discover the personal relevance of their schoolwork
This toolkit provides strategies, inspiration, and tools for relating lessons to students' lives
This activity helps students understand how their own individual interests relate to the content they learn in school.
This video shares how teachers can animate math instruction using a problem-based approach
A teacher discusses what a good grappling problem looks like and how to make it successful with students
This video showcases a school in San Diego where students for real audiences using project-based learning
This article presents some strategies teachers can use to answer the "Why do need to learn this?" question from students today
The consensogram is a survey technique that helps assess students' needs, attitudes, or knowledge
A lesson where students learn about first-person commentary, why it is important, and how students can develop tools to create impactful commentaries.
Chapter 2: Create Opportunities for Student Choice
When students have some degree of autonomy regarding what they learn and how they learn it, they are much more likely to engage meaningfully with their schoolwork
Meaningful Work - Create Opportunities for Student Choice
This toolkit offers simple ways to increase student engagement by offering choice in the classroom
A college professor explains a multi-step project in which students learn to work collaboratively on a writing project
This strategy helps teachers differentiate a lesson and allows students to choose the type of writing for assignments
Five strategies which can be used in the classroom to help students speak up and help make important choices for the classroom.
Learning menus can be used to give students options about how they want to apply a concept they have learned
