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.

Read More..

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.

Read More..

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.

Read More..

DO WE WRITE OFF SLOW STUDENTS

Do We Write Off Slow Students?
0diggsdigg
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?

Read More..

How to be a Writer who Writes

How to Become a Writer Who Writes

Ads by Google

Gertrude Stein wrote, “To write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write.” Who can say what she meant (she also wrote, “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose”), except perhaps exactly what she wrote: that writing is all and everything of it, the beginning and the end. That to write is to write. We just do it. How to get started writing? Write. How to keep going? Write. Sadly, for many of us it just isn’t that simple. We have trouble getting started, we have trouble keeping the pace and, too often, we simply give up or our enthusiasm and determination trickle away, like a stream petering out. But because writing is in our hearts and souls and DNA, after a few weeks or months or even years, we’re back at it again. More determined than ever that, this time, we’ll stay with it.

Maybe we do and maybe we don’t. In my experience as a teacher, more often than not people don’t stay with it. For some, the cycle repeats and repeats. Because we can’t keep the thing going, we begin to judge ourselves failures at writing, our self-esteem goes the way of our tossed out pages, and after a while, it becomes more and more difficult to begin again. This is heartbreaking. Because we are writers and when we aren’t being fully and wholly ourselves — when a piece of ourselves is missing — we can never feel at home in the world or at peace within ourselves. Writing is who we are. Not all of who we are, but enough of who we are that when we’re not writing, we’re not whole. Claim Yourself As Writer Until you name yourself Writer, you will never be a writer who writes (and keeps writing). Most writers I know, especially those who have not published, say, “I want to be a writer.” Or “I’m a [fill in the blank] and I like to write.” Or “I’ve always dreamed of being a writer.” But they don’t actually call themselves a writer. Think of all the other names you give yourself: man/woman, mother/father, wife/husband, friend, teacher, technician, masseuse, lawyer, gardener, chef. We take each of these names as a way of identifying ourselves, both to others and to ourselves. We are what we say we are. In some cultures, new names are assumed when character-evolving events take place. These names indicate the person has been transformed. If you announce you are a writer, rather than simply mouthing that you want to be or you’d like to be, you may be transformed. Try it. Right now. Speak your name out loud followed by, “I’m a writer.” Let yourself experience the sensations you feel when you sound out the words. “But I haven’t been published yet,” you might say, as if this were the thing that would give you the right to call yourself writer. After all, when you tell people you’re a writer, don’t they always ask, “Oh, and what have you published?” Listen to this: Being published doesn’t have anything to do with being a writer! It has to do with earning money as a writer. Maybe. Getting some kind of validation and recognition, perhaps notoriety and fame. Though truth be told, the majority of published writers don’t earn all that much money or notoriety or fame. We might say, to be published is to be published is to be published. To be sure, getting published is the aim of many of us. After all, we write to communicate, and having an audience is the flip side of the communication coin. But it is not the reason we write. We write because it is what we must do. Anne Sexton said, “When I am writing I am doing the thing I was meant to do. ” Besides, once we are published, this doesn’t mean we will stop writing. We will continue to write. This is what writers do. I have this vision of me at my writing table, a fat roll of butcher’s paper at one end and a take-up reel with a crank at the other end. The paper just keeps passing beneath my pen and I just keep writing. As the old joke goes, “Old writers never die, they just keep revising the ending.” How do you claim yourself as writer? First, say it. “I’m a writer.” Say it out loud. Say it to yourself in the mirror. Say it to your friends and family. Say it to the next person you meet at a party who asks, “What do you do?” Say it to a stranger in line at the grocery store. Say it to your mother. Mostly, say it to yourself. “I’m a writer.” • Make a place for your writing, a sacred place where you go with joy as your companion, not dread or guilt or “shoulds” riding your shoulders like weights of sand. If you don’t already have a room or specific place, make one. Take up a whole room or a section of a room. Before she created her own studio, my friend Wendy used a screen to separate her writing place from the rest of the living room. If the only space you can free up for your writing is part of a table, sometimes, when you’re not eating on it, then make it a special place. When you go there for your writing, bring along a candle or lamp or some flowers, anything that transforms the space from the quotidian to the unique. Make it important and make it yours however you can. Claim the space. • Get the tools you need. Honor your writing with the kind of paper or notebook you like; buy your favorite pens by the box or spend a bundle on that Waterman or Mont Blanc you’ve always wanted. Have a computer that belongs to you — not one you have to share — and a good printer. It’s amazing what just printing out your writing using a laser jet printer will do to make it look — and you feel — professional. Get a good dictionary, thesaurus, and stylebook. Find books on the craft and subscribe to writing journals. • Hang out with other writers. Go to readings and book signings, open mikes. Communicate with other writers. Drop a note to someone whose book you admire and tell them (not in a gushy, fan magazine kind of way, but as one writer to another). Sign up for workshops and conferences. Get in a group. • Read as a writer. Learn from the best. Study your favorite authors, and copy passages into your notebook to get the feel of their rhythm and style. Deconstruct their sentences, paragraphs, scenes, and chapters to discover their techniques and their secrets. Read the work aloud and discuss the books with your writer friends. Next to the act of writing itself, reading good writing will be your best teacher. Make Time to Write The second thing you must do to be a writer who writes is make the time to write. This is where many would-be writers fall short. Unless you make the time to write, you’ll never write. Extra time won’t just show up, and if you promise to do your writing “as soon as...” you’ll never get to it. Take it from one who knows. For the better part of twenty-five years, I was a writer who would write “as soon as...”; I had more stops and starts in my writing career than a local train. It wasn’t until I actually set aside writing time on a regular basis that I became a writer who writes. Make an appointment with your writing self, write it down in your calendar: 2:00 p.m. Monday: Write; 3:30 p.m. Tuesday: Write; 9:15 a.m. Wednesday: Write; and so forth. Find a time that fits you. Don’t set aside two hours if you can only do thirty minutes. Don’t set your alarm for 5:30 in the morning if you always resist getting up and hate the mornings. You may come to resent your writing as much as you resent the alarm clock. By the same token, don’t say you’ll do it at night after everything else is done if, by 8:30, you’re supine on the couch and can’t keep your eyes open. Find a time that works for you. Take half your lunch hour. Do it right after work. Get up half an hour earlier. If you have the flexibility to make your own schedule, set aside time during the workday. In my classes I listen to the complaints of students who say they just don’t have time to write, then I ask for a show of hands of those who watch television on a regular basis or those who surf the Web. When the rows of hands waving in the air look like an Iowa cornfield in August, I ask again, “Who can’t find the time to write?” Sheepish grins and embarrassed giggles. Write instead of watching TV, instead of surfing the Web, instead of spending an hour or more reading the newspaper, instead of going out with friends. You have to give up something. Even if it’s only leisure time in front of the tube. Note: don’t give up taking walks or witnessing sunsets. You may have always heard that if you want to be a writer, you have to write every day. This is not an absolute rule. Few rules are. To be successful (i.e., a writer who writes), you do have to write several times a week — at least four or five sessions, and every day is best. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon swears by his 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. Sunday-Thursday routine. Part of it is the daily habit of it and part of it is the continuity. The writing will come easier with regular practice, too. You get better at something you do often. Mick Jagger said, “You have to sing every day so you can build up to being, you know, Amazingly Brilliant.” In a New Yorker (January 28, 2002) article titled “The Learning Curve — How Do You Become a Good Surgeon? Practice,” Atul Gawande related the importance of practice. In writing about elite performers, he said, “[T]he most important talent may be the talent for practice itself.” He referred to K. Anders Ericsson, a psychologist, who noted that “the most important role that innate factors play may be in a person’s willingness to engage in sustained training.” Like exercise or losing weight or taking a class, sometimes it’s a whole lot easier to do it with a supportive companion. Make a date with a friend for writing. If you can’t get together in person, make a phone call or e-mail one another to say, “I wrote today” or “I’m going to write at 6:30 this evening,” or “How’d the writing go today?” Waiting for inspiration to descend before you write is like waiting for Godot. Interminable. It’s been said that if you show up at your page at the agreed upon time, inspiration will know where to find you. Someone else said, “Writing is 20 percent inspiration and 80 percent perspiration.” Besides, if writing is your daily practice, you won’t need inspiration to get to it. Imagine waiting for inspiration to rest her shining arms around you before you take the dog for a walk or drive to work. Write Finally, the third leg in the triangle of being a writer who writes is, of course, doing the thing. Talking about writing isn’t writing. Thinking about writing isn’t writing. Dreaming or fantasizing isn’t writing. Neither are outlining, researching, or making notes. All these may be a part of the whole milieu of the writing life and necessary to getting a project completed, but only writing is writing. “You can’t sit around thinking,” said fiction writer David Long. “You must sit around writing.” So every day, at the appointed time (or at some spontaneous gift of time), you sit at your desk (or your table in the café or on the grass in the park), you open your notebook or you boot up your computer, and you write. Do this every day and I will guarantee you, you will fill notebook after notebook, you will begin and complete stories, essays, narrative nonfiction — whatever you want to write. You will have bits and pieces and wild, imaginative ramblings. You will be a Writer Who Writes. by Judy Reeves

Read More..