As you may have seen me explain in a previous video, I always start out day 1 of my APES class by reading my students Aldo Leopold’s Thinking Like a Mountain essay. It’s a great way to introduce them to the mantra that we’ll use throughout the year to embody the kind of big-picture, interconnected thinking that I hope they leave the course having learned how to do.
I also find it refreshing to ask high schoolers to sit on the floor (some do, some pass) and listen to a rich story for a few minutes, amidst the chaos of the first day of school.
If you want to grab a copy of the Jamboard and discussion questions I use with my students after reading the essay, check out my free, flipped instruction mini-course.
However, this year I included another short activity to go along with our reading and discussion of Thinking Like a Mountain: the APES Utility-Value Intervention (UVI). A UVI is basically an activity to help students see the usefulness or relevance of a given educational task, course, etc. to their future goals or plans. It’s been well documented to increase interest, performance, and enrollment in future courses, especially in students who had lower initial expectations of success in the course.
What I love about the concept of a UVI:
- It can be incredibly simple. Some versions involve students writing lengthy essays, but the APES version I adapted from Dave Stuart Jr.’s take on the UVI is pretty simple and can be done in about 10 minutes or so.
- It also helps me get to know my students and form connections with them on day 1 of class.
- It gives me an idea of their value and goals, which I can leverage in future conversations to try and help them see how mastering AP Environmental Science can support things they want or value in life.
- The research documenting its efficacy has been well replicated over 15 years.
- The effects have been shown to persist well after the intervention.
So here’s how it works. Students simply list out 10 goals, interests or values they have in the left hand column. I did this right at the beginning of day 1 of class, but you can totally still implement this later in the year, particularly after a unit or a school break.
I collect students’ UVI sheets and take a look at their goals, interests, and values. Then when I pass them back, I make sure to comment on at least one of their answers that I find interesting, relatable or admirable. This helps kickstart the relationship building process and also helps me commit at least one value, interest, or goal to memory for each student.
Then after unit 1 or unit 2, have them start to fill in the right hand column with knowledge or skills they’ve learned. (I’ll probably print a new one for each unit and have them try this at various points throughout the year.)
Finally, have them write simple sentences that emphasize the connection between the things in the right hand column and the things in the left hand column.
They can come up with connections themselves, or use some of the sentence templates I’ve provided below the two columns.
I then ask students to share their sentences with a partner at their table, before I call on a few students to share their partner’s sentence with the whole class.
If time allows, you can adapt this to be a full paragraph or a flip-grid video assignment. I think this year I’ll have students pick their favorite UVI sentence from the 9 units and adapt it to a video essay at the end of the year.
Stay tuned to future newsletters and blog posts for updates on how I’m using the UVI throughout the year!
🏔️ Jordan