Fernando

Fernando
Artist: Abba
Can you hear the drums Fernando?
I remember long ago another starry night like this
In the firelight Fernando
You were humming to yourself and softly strumming your guitar
I could hear the distant drums
And sounds of bugle calls were coming from afar

They were closer now Fernando
Every hour every minute seemed to last eternally
I was so afraid Fernando
We were young and full of life and none of us prepared to die
And I'm not ashamed to say
The roar of guns and cannons almost made me cry

There was something in the air that night
The stars were bright, Fernando
They were shining there for you and me
For liberty, Fernando
Though I never thought that we could lose
There's no regret
If I had to do the same again
I would, my friend, Fernando 2X

Now we're old and grey Fernando
And since many years I haven't seen a rifle in your hand
Can you hear the drums Fernando?
Do you still recall the frightful night we crossed the Rio Grande?
I could see it in your eyes
How proud you were to fight for freedom in this land

There was something in the air that night
The stars were bright, Fernando
They were shining there for you and me
For liberty, Fernando
Though I never thought that we could lose
There's no regret
If I had to do the same again
I would, my friend, Fernando

There was something in the air that night
The stars were bright, Fernando
They were shining there for you and me
For liberty, Fernando
Though I never thought that we could lose
There's no regret
If I had to do the same again
I would, my friend, Fernando
Yes, if I had to do the same again
I would, my friend, Fernando...

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Helping Students Become Motivated Learners

Fundamentally, the process of motivation stems from stimulation, which in turn is followed by an emotional reaction that leads to a specific behavioral response. In the classroom, if a student's behavior is regarded as desirable and is rewarded, the positive reinforcement stimulates the student to repeat the desirable behavior. Conversely, if a student's behavior is regarded as undesirable and the individual receives a response with a negative undertone, demotivation results. Furthermore, anxiety and frustration often result if behavior thought to be positive does not lead to proper recognition, reinforcement and reward.
Basically, motivations stems from unsatisfied needs. However, it must be understood that individuals are motivated through a wide variety of needs. Some people are highly motivated by money, others by power, and other by praise. Since teachers are not usually in a position to offer students money or power, the focus here will be on praise. It should also be noted that some people are self-motivated and perform because they like challenge and want to perform. While educators can't make or teach students to be self-motivated, they can encourage and promote this highly desirable personal trait. Generally, students will show some self-motivation if they (1) know what is expected of them, (2) think the effort is worthwhile, and (3) feel they will benefit through effective performance.
Watch what you say
Some teachers feel that motivating students is really not one of their job responsibilities. However, whether they like it or not, students are expecting and collecting feedback from their instructors. Teachers need to be very aware of impact that their verbal comments and nonverbal body language have on their students' motivation level. Below are some tips for being a motivator and not a demotivator.
Things to do
Show honest appreciation. When teachers use "I statements" to convey their honest appreciation about a student, the teacher is communicating personal appreciation, rather than using a mechanical or an exaggerated response. Below are some examples of honest appreciation."
• "I appreciate that."
• "I like the way you said that."
• "Thank you very much for that."
• "I sure like your taking that risk."
Communicate empathetic acceptance or understanding. Because students will often make incorrect responses, it is up to the teacher to respond without discouraging the student from being willing to take risks and attempting to problem solve. "I'm with you" statements communicate an empathetic acceptance or understanding of what a student has experienced or what they are trying to communicate. This communicates that the student is not alone, and the teacher appreciates their attempt to perform. Below are some good examples of "I'm with you":
• "I might make that same mistake."
• "Lots of us feel that way."
• "I can see how you would do that."
• "I understand why you would say that."
Provide attention without praise. This is done when a teacher simply gives time and attention to a student by listening carefully. When teachers do this, they are supporting and encouraging a student without causing the student to grow dependent on the teacher approval or praise. Below are a list of things to do when giving attention without praise:
• Use honest appreciation or "I'm with you."
• Use non-threatening physical touch like a pat on the arm or shaking hands.
• Use sincere eye contact that shows you are truly listening.
• Simply give students time so that you can listen or communicate with them about a situation.
• Greet a student after their absence.
Use plain corrects or incorrects. Sometimes it is best to tell a student that an answer was correct or incorrect without stimulating any distracting emotion. This allows the teacher to treat the students like intelligent people who do not appreciate overstatements or exaggerations. Below is a list of some appropriate plain correct responses:
• "Yes, that's right."
• "Okay."
• "Yes, that's just what I wanted."
• "Correct."
• "Yes, thank you."
• "No, the correct answer is _____________."
• "You had the first part right, but the last part was incorrect."
• "Thank you for taking a risk to answer that, even though it was the wrong answer."
Provide praise and reward for all. Teachers must be fair in distributing their praise and all students should receive praise. Look for positive things to say about a students work even when pointing out problems or mistakes with the work. Some might receive praise for bigger accomplishments than others but even the lower performers need a regular pat on the back. Teacher should also gives praise to the class as a whole to encourage the class and also build team unity.
Cautions
Too much praise can lead to a student becoming dependent on it. When a teacher's praise becomes a pleasure for the student instead of serving to motivate them, it basically becomes a addiction. The student begins to require constant praise and develops no personal initiative.
Unfairness is an issue that occurs quite frequently in many classrooms. Consciously and unconsciously teachers tend to react more positively to some students more than others. Teachers need to try to put personal differences aside and treat each student equally so that each students has the same opportunity to be motivated to learn.
Manipulation happens when teachers focus their attention on the positive behavior of a student or group of students in order to hint that a certain behavior is the most desirable. This works in some situations to motivate students to modify their behavior; yet, underneath it is really saying that it is okay to manipulate people to get what you want Below are a couple of examples:
o "Look at how well Sally did on the assignment."
o "I really like how well this side of the room is contributing."
Exaggeration quickly devalues honest relationships between students and teachers. Exaggerated praise includes statements such as those presented below. When these kind of statements are used repetitively, students are not encouraged to be intrinsically motivated, rather they depend on extrinsic motivation.
o "Great answer!"
o " Super!"
o " Wonderful!"
o " Sensational!"
The overall goal of teachers should be to help students develop into self-motivating learners. Students who are encouraged to become motivated lifelong learners will be more successful in and out of the classroom.

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MOTIVATING STUDENTS

by Alan Haskvitz
Discipline and motivation are two sides of the same sword. A motivated student is not a discipline problem, and discipline problems are caused by a lack of motivation. The problem for teachers is finding enough time, energy and ideas.
About 40 years ago, I read a book about a new teacher struggling to motivate students in an inner-city school. He brought in a couple of rodents, and this spurred interest in a student. The student watched the rodents, cared for them, and was horrified when there became so many of them. The teacher watched in delight as for the first time all year, the boy picked up a book about the rodents and started to read. The next day the student walked into the class, separated the male and female, and never read another book that year. In other words, motivation is a long-term vision.
Here is another example. Recently I had a brilliant young man in my class who had to be placed in a group home to avoid gang problems. He was interested in boxing, so I motivated him by using the resources at Reach Every Child to have him write to Olympic boxing team members. It worked for a while.
However, as soon as he moved to high school, he resumed his old habits and was sent to the continuation high school for non-performance. I talked a private school administrator into letting him transfer there, as that institution had automatic university acceptance upon graduation. The school had only one condition -- no discipline problems. I called the continuation school administrator and told her. She was quite pleased and rushed to tell the student the news. He was excited. But the next day he started a fight over a pencil, which negated everyone's efforts. Instead of seeing the new opportunity as a motivator, it was seen as punishment. So, the next rule, beside motivation being long term, is to make sure you have parental support and shared values.
So where does that leave teachers? The same place they have been for centuries, only now, standardized testing emphasizes improving scores to prove the school and educator are doing a good job. To alleviate that pressure as much as possible, I have listed some resources that are general in nature, but provide interesting checklists that might have value. All have good ideas, but most teachers work in totally unique situations, so these thoughts may require alterations.

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Characteristics of slow learners

In general, slow learning students may display some or all of these characteristics, depending on their age and degree of problems acquiring knowledge at school.
• First, slow learners are frequently immature in their relations with others and do poorly in school.
• Secondly, they cannot do complex problems and work very slowly.
• They lose track of time and cannot transfer what they have learned from one task to another well.
• They do not easily master skills that are academic in nature, such as the times tables or spelling rules.
• Perhaps the most frustrating trait is their inability to have long-term goals. They live in the present, and so have significant problems with time management probably due to a short attention span and poor concentration skills.
Remember, just because a child is not doing well in one class does not make that student a slow learner. Very few children excel in all subject areas unless there is great deal of grade inflation at that school. So it’s essential the parent or teacher examine in depth standardized tests scores to look for trends.
Also, slow learners differ from reluctant learners. A slow learner initially wants to learn, but has a problem with the process. A reluctant learner is not motivated and can also be passive aggressive, creating more problems for teachers and parents through non-cooperation. Reluctant learners seldom have learning disabilities.
Proven ideas to help slow learners
• Provide a quiet place to work, where the child can be easily observed and motivated.
• Keep homework sessions short.
• Provide activity times before and during homework.
• Add a variety of tasks to the learning even if not assigned, such as painting a picture of a reading assignment.
• Allow for success.
• Ask questions about the assignment while the child is working.
• Go over the homework before bed and before school.
• Teach how to use a calendar to keep track of assignments.
• Read to the child.
• Use my “Three Transfer” form of learning, in which the student must take information and do three things with it beside reading. For example, read it, explain it to someone else, draw a picture of it, and take notes on it.
• Be patient but consistent.
• Do not reward unfinished tasks.
Challenge the child
Have the child do the most difficult assignments first and leave the easier ones to later. Call it the dessert principle.
Don’t be overprotective. Students whose parents frequently intercede at school are teaching that they do not respect their child’s abilitites. If you do call a teacher, make sure you seek a positive outcome. Remember most teachers have worked with numerous slow learners and have plenty of experience. However, sharing your child’s strengths and weaknesses could make the school year more beneficial for all concerned.
Contact the teacher if there is a concern. Calling an administrator solves nothing, as the teacher is the sole legal judge of academic success.
Take your child to exciting places where they can see academic success is important. A trip to a local university or community college, a walking tour of city hall, a visit to the fire station or a behind-the-scenes tour of a zoo are highly motivating.
Examples of interventions for slow learners
Environment: Reduce distractions, change seating to promote attentiveness, have a peer student teacher, and allow more breaks.
Assignments: Make them shorter and with more variation, repeat work in various forms, have a contract, give more hands-on work, have assignments copied by student, have students use “three transfer” method.
Assessment: Use shorter tests, oral testing, redoing tests, short feedback times, don’t make students compete.
What to avoid: Don’t use cooperative learning that isolates the student and places him or her in a no-win situation or standardized tests. Definitely don’t ignore the problem.
What to encourage: Grouping with a patient partner. Learning about the child’s interests. Placing the student in charge. Mapping, graphic organizers, and hands-on work. Using Bloom’s taxonomy of tasks to make the assignments more appropriate.

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Helping your slow-learning child

by Alan Haskvitz
It’s no surprise children learn at different rates, and, according to some published research, only when they are ready. Other research stresses intrinsic rewards, differentiated curriculum, and motivation by personalizing lessons. However, the bottom line for many educators is that some children are slow to learn, but don’t have a learning deficiency.
Perhaps the greatest challenge to an educator is a child who is a slow learner. These children do not fall into the category of special education, do well outside the classroom, and show no evidence of having a medical problem. They simply do not do well in school or a particular subject.
In the days before formal schooling, these students would carry on productive lives working at tasks that did not require extensive reading, writing or math. However, today the emphasis is less on occupational learning and more on academic preparation. Thus, there is a growing need for help to remediate these children and provide them the best possible opportunities in a changing world.
Having successfully taught for nearly 30 years in several states and countries, I’ve seen two commonalities emerge with slow learners. First, they need extra time to complete tasks. This means parents must be willing to augment what happens at school regardless of how fruitless it might appear. Secondly, the child must be offered appropriate incentives. Depending on the child, the best incentives are family projects or activities, such as building a model or attending a concert or game. The incentives should require delayed gratification, so the child learns patience.
The next area is proper nutrition. Children need breakfast. Period. Every study done points out a quality breakfast and proper sleep are the two best ways to improve student performance.
Finally, a teacher or parent must seek lessons and other resources that make it easier to differentiate the curriculum and make learning more vital and relevant. To this end, special education sites on the Internet have some great ideas. Although slow learners do not qualify for special education classes, the concepts teachers use with special education students are ideal for helping a slow learner once the student’s weaknesses have been diagnosed. In any one of my classes, about 10 percent are slow learners, so having a slow learning child is not unusual.
One of the best places to start looking for help is at Reach Every Child, Special Education, where you can find a wide range of helpful sites. Also at Get Help Teaching Special Needs Students.

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DO WE WRITE OFF SLOW STUDENTS

Do We Write Off Slow Students?
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In the post Are You Slow?, Andrea states, “When we mistake speed for ability — or rather, lack of speed for lack of ability — we misinterpret a person’s intelligence and their ability to learn.”

This really hit home for me when I think about how many of my special education students have been written off by other teachers. My students were slower the students in general education classes because their disability caused them to process information in a different way. In my school, my self contained students were mainstreamed for two general education elective classes in addition to the five classes with me for academic subjects. Even though I had a student who had extreme difficulty reading words, he could take apart a car engine and put it back together again. I had another student who went through a traumatic emotional experience but she was so artistic, the art teacher wanted her to take upper level art courses. These are just a couple of examples of what my students could do and even though I would focus on their strengths in order to work on their weaknesses, other teachers wrote them off as “slow.”

One teacher stands out though because she was willing to work with me and students to get around their learning difficulties. Keep in mind though that when she first found out that two of my students would be in her broadcast journalism class, I thought she would blow a gasket. She was quite concerned about teaching them because she was responsible for the newspaper and the daily TV news program made by the students. J. had Down Syndrome and D. was Mentally Disabled/Autistic. We worked closely together to decide what skills they could do and what accommodations would be made. In fact, we probably touched base at least once a week. By the end of the year, D. was the weatherman on our daily news channel and J. helped with the equipment. The other students loved them and were pretty protective towards them but I really feel this attitude came from the teacher and how she treated my students. In fact, the teacher’s attitude changed so much over the year that she requested that they take second year of her course the following year. This teacher was amazing because she overcame her doubts and was so willing to try to work with my students. She could have said they were too “slow” and found reasons why they shouldn’t be in her class, but she didn’t.
My husband was a terrible student when he was in high school and from the stories he tells me, I’m sure that his teachers would have considered him slow. He ended up going in the navy and getting his GED. I have to say (don’t think I’m prejudiced just because he is my husband) but I think he is the most intelligent man I have ever known. As a student he didn’t fit into the mold that other students did and teachers seemed to write him off. I’m proud to say that he recently retired from being a judge and I can’t tell you how many law books he has read. What might have been considered “slowness” in school, tends to be seen as “deliberateness” as an adult and comes in handy when making a decision that could alter a person’s life. Former teachers are shocked when they hear he married a teacher and became a judge. He loves to read textbooks, manuals, and anything that teaches him something new because there is noone pressuring him on how he should be learning.

Maybe that is why many students are not successful and drop out of school. Are we worrying too much on how they are learning something instead of being concerned that they are actually learning the concepts and skills we want them to learn? When I taught my students how to do a certain math skill, there was usually more than one way to come up with the solution. Is doing it the exact way the teacher demands more important than coming up with the correct answer as a result of what works best for the student?

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Teaching Writing Strategies

Teaching Writing Strategies
We recommend a four-step instructional process for teaching writing strategies.
http://www.gse.buffalo.edu/org/writingstrategies/steps.htm
The steps are these:



1. Identify a strategy worth teaching
Identifying strategies worth teaching means looking for strategies that will be genuinely helpful. In the case of struggling writers, strategies worth teaching are the ones which will help them overcome their writing difficulties. In our research we have decided that the best way to identify such strategies is by talking with struggling writers, asking them about how they write, what they think about while writing, and what they see as difficulties. Additional insight can be gained by studying student papers to infer where writers are having difficulty and by observing writers at work.

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