The document provides strategies for teachers to encourage learning goals in students. It discusses encouraging traits like being well-organized, breaking large goals into smaller goals, observing one's own performance, and believing one can achieve. It emphasizes the importance of enjoyment, positive reactions to tasks, high effort and persistence, and seeking academic help. The overall strategies are meant to enhance students' self-motivation and ability to learn effectively.
Being a teacher, there can be nothing worse than coming across an unmotivated student. Come to think of it – All your effort to plan and prepare lessons can go waste if the student is not motivated to do better. Trying to encourage a student can often feel like trying to catch smoke with your bare hands. Teenagers are tough to motivate- every teacher remembers that one stubborn student in every class couldn’t be persuaded to move an inch! Or the ones who’d always do the opposite of what was told. And worst of all, the ones who’d mentally be on some other plane of existence entirely!
So You’re a New Teacher??
How to Survive the First Years
“Every teacher must understand the importance of promoting a positive class atmosphere. Each school is a microcosm of our society with its positives and negatives, and the importance
of respect, kindness and
honesty among students
should NOT be minimized”
- Lindberg and Swick, 2005
Being a teacher, there can be nothing worse than coming across an unmotivated student. Come to think of it – All your effort to plan and prepare lessons can go waste if the student is not motivated to do better. Trying to encourage a student can often feel like trying to catch smoke with your bare hands. Teenagers are tough to motivate- every teacher remembers that one stubborn student in every class couldn’t be persuaded to move an inch! Or the ones who’d always do the opposite of what was told. And worst of all, the ones who’d mentally be on some other plane of existence entirely!
So You’re a New Teacher??
How to Survive the First Years
“Every teacher must understand the importance of promoting a positive class atmosphere. Each school is a microcosm of our society with its positives and negatives, and the importance
of respect, kindness and
honesty among students
should NOT be minimized”
- Lindberg and Swick, 2005
32 Strategies for Building a Positive Learning EnvironmentEdutopia
These tips were contributed by the educators and parents of Edutopia’s community in response to our Start the Year Strong Sweepstakes. There were many amazing entries, and it was a challenge narrowing them down to these 32.
6 Proven core strategies to dramatically improve school performance. In addition, all resources are cited and listed. The entire slide was created in Keynote and all images were edited using Photo Shop Elements or Keynote. Images sources available as well.
Advancing Learning - Building Student Agency and Learning MindsetsCatharine Ozols
Using the work of noted researchers (e.g. Dweck, Walton, Yeager, Oakley, Roediger, McDaniel, Dunlosky, and others), and applying the principles of productive gamification, Mohawk College is leveraging the use of educational technology to explore ways in which to build student agency, learning readiness, and resilience among academically-at-risk students as part of an ARIE Grant.
Teacher Resource Guidebook - Key Resources List ~ tessafrica.net ~ For more information, Please see websites below:
`
Organic Edible Schoolyards & Gardening with Children =
http://scribd.com/doc/239851214 ~
`
Double Food Production from your School Garden with Organic Tech =
http://scribd.com/doc/239851079 ~
`
Free School Gardening Art Posters =
http://scribd.com/doc/239851159 ~
`
Increase Food Production with Companion Planting in your School Garden =
http://scribd.com/doc/239851159 ~
`
Healthy Foods Dramatically Improves Student Academic Success =
http://scribd.com/doc/239851348 ~
`
City Chickens for your Organic School Garden =
http://scribd.com/doc/239850440 ~
`
Huerto Ecológico, Tecnologías Sostenibles, Agricultura Organica
http://scribd.com/doc/239850233
`
Simple Square Foot Gardening for Schools - Teacher Guide =
http://scribd.com/doc/239851110
Rewarding young learners is one of the most effective methods that can make them active to exert a lot of effort to achieve fruitful results in the educational environment.
A real world example of how the new approach championed by the NAHT and Frog Education is making an impact in East Whitby Community Primary School, along with a number of observations from a large number of other schools on the same journey. With thanks to Simon Smith, Head Teacher from East Whitby School.
32 Strategies for Building a Positive Learning EnvironmentEdutopia
These tips were contributed by the educators and parents of Edutopia’s community in response to our Start the Year Strong Sweepstakes. There were many amazing entries, and it was a challenge narrowing them down to these 32.
6 Proven core strategies to dramatically improve school performance. In addition, all resources are cited and listed. The entire slide was created in Keynote and all images were edited using Photo Shop Elements or Keynote. Images sources available as well.
Advancing Learning - Building Student Agency and Learning MindsetsCatharine Ozols
Using the work of noted researchers (e.g. Dweck, Walton, Yeager, Oakley, Roediger, McDaniel, Dunlosky, and others), and applying the principles of productive gamification, Mohawk College is leveraging the use of educational technology to explore ways in which to build student agency, learning readiness, and resilience among academically-at-risk students as part of an ARIE Grant.
Teacher Resource Guidebook - Key Resources List ~ tessafrica.net ~ For more information, Please see websites below:
`
Organic Edible Schoolyards & Gardening with Children =
http://scribd.com/doc/239851214 ~
`
Double Food Production from your School Garden with Organic Tech =
http://scribd.com/doc/239851079 ~
`
Free School Gardening Art Posters =
http://scribd.com/doc/239851159 ~
`
Increase Food Production with Companion Planting in your School Garden =
http://scribd.com/doc/239851159 ~
`
Healthy Foods Dramatically Improves Student Academic Success =
http://scribd.com/doc/239851348 ~
`
City Chickens for your Organic School Garden =
http://scribd.com/doc/239850440 ~
`
Huerto Ecológico, Tecnologías Sostenibles, Agricultura Organica
http://scribd.com/doc/239850233
`
Simple Square Foot Gardening for Schools - Teacher Guide =
http://scribd.com/doc/239851110
Rewarding young learners is one of the most effective methods that can make them active to exert a lot of effort to achieve fruitful results in the educational environment.
A real world example of how the new approach championed by the NAHT and Frog Education is making an impact in East Whitby Community Primary School, along with a number of observations from a large number of other schools on the same journey. With thanks to Simon Smith, Head Teacher from East Whitby School.
From an Experience of Vulnerability ReportingKaoru Maeda
An experience of vulnerability reporting when Lepidum found OpenSSL's bug "CCS Injection Vulnerability".
Presented in the Rump Session, SSR 2015, Tokyo.
http://ssr2015.com/
This was my Plenary at a talk I gave for Plymouth University. In under 5 minutes. All images from Haikudeck/Flickr or by me.
Action - get involved in everything, try everything out
Blog - read them, write on, contribute
Currencies - with the right culture, anything can be a reward in class (even paperclips)
Dress code - don't wear flip flops; you're at work, not the beach!
Friends - and PTAs, get involved, such fun!
Groundstaff - the caretaker, cleaner and cook are the real power at school, and can open doors, literally
Holidays - you get 13 weeks, most people get 3, stop whining
Inspiration - find anything for inspiration, seek ideas out
Juggling - don't take on too much
Knowledge - don't just read teaching books, read around subjects too
Lighting - banish flickering bulbs and make sure tables are under lights
Mentor - Be the mentor, not the hero. Be Yoda, not Luke
Nature - get outside as much as you can - rain or shine
Organisation - Know your organisation weakspots, find the masters of this and learn from them (this my actual board, I use GTD system, and although carnage, this works brilliantly for me)
Playgrounds - get out there and meet the pupils (top tip - spell you name out in giant letters to visit places you wouldn't normally visit)
Quiet - Is unreasonable. Who is the silence for, you or them? A hum of activity is lovely
Resources - Get these from the wider world, since that is what you are training them for - find Junk sales, Boot sales and £1 shops for inspiration
SLT - They aren't the devil, and for the vast majority of the time, he shades of grey are innumerable
Teachmeets - go, learn, present, adore, build - this is CPD on speed
Umbrellas - No idea - can't remember. Go out in the rain maybe?
Vision - build your vision - for your pupils, subject and class. Tell the world this vision, then you are forced to try and complete it
Wall Displays - these are a nightmare - go to the January Sales in department stores and buy calendars instead for some fantastic images
X-Ray - You will get ill (especially in October) - accept this!
Y - Yawn - if you yawn three times, go to bed!
Zzzz - plan NOTHING for the first day after school has broken up. Cancel snooze.
Formative assessment: an important teaching tool for any subject billhutchison
Formative assessment, or assessment for learning, is the art and science of using questions, assessments and feedback to empower learners. This deck, from www.obrussa.com, gives a non-technical overview for teachers and parents.
Formative assessment: an important teaching tool for any subject billhutchison
Formative assessment, or assessment for learning, is the use of questions, tests, reviews and feedback to encourage learners and allow them to take control. This is a practical guide from www.obrussa.com for teachers and parents.
motivation skills for teachers. it will help to the young teachers for success in the field of education and training. it gives the student engagement,motivation for good learning environment.
An Effective Teacher Essay
My Career as a Teacher Essay
My Teaching Philosophy Essay
Being a Teacher Essay
Essay about Teachers and Students
Essay on The Teaching Profession
The Ten Commandments of Questioning in the ClassroomStephen Lockyer
This is an condensed extract from the book, “Hands Up: Questions to ignite thinking in the classroom,” written by Stephen Lockyer and available from Amazon. https://t.co/S0cfyGAT5Y
Teachers are freely sharing ideas, activities and resources like never before, and these slides were used by Stephen Lockyer at the BETT 2014 Exhibition to illustrate his top nine sharing tools and concepts.
For further information on the ideas or the talk itself, please feel free to make contact with Stephen in Twitter at @mrlockyer.
A talk I gave at an ICT conference in 2012. Basically, my point was that everything leads back to an analogue world, and we need to look to digital products as being conduits, not solutions. In schools, they should be digitools. Also the talk with one of my best gags ever. Those there will remember.
Ideatastic - Creative ways to generate new ideas for problemsStephen Lockyer
My talk at #tlt13 was entitled 'Ideatastic,' and this was based on the fact that I find generating ideas surprising easy to do, yet I'm aware that other friends and colleagues don't. I thought I'd share my views on ideas, some tips on idea generation, and a few warnings and suggestions. More info on this talk can be found at: www.classroomtm.co.uk
These are the accompanying slide to a talk I gave at Plymouth University in May 2013 for the final year teaching students. Although a lot of the context is lost, I'm sure the gist is clear. Desire paths are the most efficient route through somewhere, and I spoke about the need to increase efficiency without getting complacent.
A note about the slides: For this deck, I took a punt and made a slide story – this is advocated as a style from Nancy Duarte’s fantastic Slide:Ology book, and is where each slide is a part of a bigger picture. This takes a careful level of planning, but is easy to do, and you can use the oldest version of PowerPoint to do it in too! I think the overall effect, with all the slides actually forming part of the last slide may have been wasted on my audience, but it gave me a good structure to hang my ideas on, and was a ‘smile inside’ for anyone who spotted it!
Image credits for doc can be found at: http://bit.ly/14uMYw4
For more information on these slides, and if you would like to make contact with me about talks, workshops or keynotes, please find me on twitter as @mrlockyer, or online using mr.lockyer@gmail.com
Exploiting Artificial Intelligence for Empowering Researchers and Faculty, In...Dr. Vinod Kumar Kanvaria
Exploiting Artificial Intelligence for Empowering Researchers and Faculty,
International FDP on Fundamentals of Research in Social Sciences
at Integral University, Lucknow, 06.06.2024
By Dr. Vinod Kumar Kanvaria
Operation “Blue Star” is the only event in the history of Independent India where the state went into war with its own people. Even after about 40 years it is not clear if it was culmination of states anger over people of the region, a political game of power or start of dictatorial chapter in the democratic setup.
The people of Punjab felt alienated from main stream due to denial of their just demands during a long democratic struggle since independence. As it happen all over the word, it led to militant struggle with great loss of lives of military, police and civilian personnel. Killing of Indira Gandhi and massacre of innocent Sikhs in Delhi and other India cities was also associated with this movement.
A Strategic Approach: GenAI in EducationPeter Windle
Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies such as Generative AI, Image Generators and Large Language Models have had a dramatic impact on teaching, learning and assessment over the past 18 months. The most immediate threat AI posed was to Academic Integrity with Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) focusing their efforts on combating the use of GenAI in assessment. Guidelines were developed for staff and students, policies put in place too. Innovative educators have forged paths in the use of Generative AI for teaching, learning and assessments leading to pockets of transformation springing up across HEIs, often with little or no top-down guidance, support or direction.
This Gasta posits a strategic approach to integrating AI into HEIs to prepare staff, students and the curriculum for an evolving world and workplace. We will highlight the advantages of working with these technologies beyond the realm of teaching, learning and assessment by considering prompt engineering skills, industry impact, curriculum changes, and the need for staff upskilling. In contrast, not engaging strategically with Generative AI poses risks, including falling behind peers, missed opportunities and failing to ensure our graduates remain employable. The rapid evolution of AI technologies necessitates a proactive and strategic approach if we are to remain relevant.
How to Make a Field invisible in Odoo 17Celine George
It is possible to hide or invisible some fields in odoo. Commonly using “invisible” attribute in the field definition to invisible the fields. This slide will show how to make a field invisible in odoo 17.
Biological screening of herbal drugs: Introduction and Need for
Phyto-Pharmacological Screening, New Strategies for evaluating
Natural Products, In vitro evaluation techniques for Antioxidants, Antimicrobial and Anticancer drugs. In vivo evaluation techniques
for Anti-inflammatory, Antiulcer, Anticancer, Wound healing, Antidiabetic, Hepatoprotective, Cardio protective, Diuretics and
Antifertility, Toxicity studies as per OECD guidelines
A workshop hosted by the South African Journal of Science aimed at postgraduate students and early career researchers with little or no experience in writing and publishing journal articles.
2024.06.01 Introducing a competency framework for languag learning materials ...Sandy Millin
http://sandymillin.wordpress.com/iateflwebinar2024
Published classroom materials form the basis of syllabuses, drive teacher professional development, and have a potentially huge influence on learners, teachers and education systems. All teachers also create their own materials, whether a few sentences on a blackboard, a highly-structured fully-realised online course, or anything in between. Despite this, the knowledge and skills needed to create effective language learning materials are rarely part of teacher training, and are mostly learnt by trial and error.
Knowledge and skills frameworks, generally called competency frameworks, for ELT teachers, trainers and managers have existed for a few years now. However, until I created one for my MA dissertation, there wasn’t one drawing together what we need to know and do to be able to effectively produce language learning materials.
This webinar will introduce you to my framework, highlighting the key competencies I identified from my research. It will also show how anybody involved in language teaching (any language, not just English!), teacher training, managing schools or developing language learning materials can benefit from using the framework.
A review of the growth of the Israel Genealogy Research Association Database Collection for the last 12 months. Our collection is now passed the 3 million mark and still growing. See which archives have contributed the most. See the different types of records we have, and which years have had records added. You can also see what we have for the future.
Safalta Digital marketing institute in Noida, provide complete applications that encompass a huge range of virtual advertising and marketing additives, which includes search engine optimization, virtual communication advertising, pay-per-click on marketing, content material advertising, internet analytics, and greater. These university courses are designed for students who possess a comprehensive understanding of virtual marketing strategies and attributes.Safalta Digital Marketing Institute in Noida is a first choice for young individuals or students who are looking to start their careers in the field of digital advertising. The institute gives specialized courses designed and certification.
for beginners, providing thorough training in areas such as SEO, digital communication marketing, and PPC training in Noida. After finishing the program, students receive the certifications recognised by top different universitie, setting a strong foundation for a successful career in digital marketing.
Macroeconomics- Movie Location
This will be used as part of your Personal Professional Portfolio once graded.
Objective:
Prepare a presentation or a paper using research, basic comparative analysis, data organization and application of economic information. You will make an informed assessment of an economic climate outside of the United States to accomplish an entertainment industry objective.
Synthetic Fiber Construction in lab .pptxPavel ( NSTU)
Synthetic fiber production is a fascinating and complex field that blends chemistry, engineering, and environmental science. By understanding these aspects, students can gain a comprehensive view of synthetic fiber production, its impact on society and the environment, and the potential for future innovations. Synthetic fibers play a crucial role in modern society, impacting various aspects of daily life, industry, and the environment. ynthetic fibers are integral to modern life, offering a range of benefits from cost-effectiveness and versatility to innovative applications and performance characteristics. While they pose environmental challenges, ongoing research and development aim to create more sustainable and eco-friendly alternatives. Understanding the importance of synthetic fibers helps in appreciating their role in the economy, industry, and daily life, while also emphasizing the need for sustainable practices and innovation.
Chapter 3 - Islamic Banking Products and Services.pptx
Developing habits for self-goals
1. Developing habits for self-goals
The traits of a student who operates using learning goals as their primary
motivation enable that student to succeed, or fail, with comfort. So how does a
teacher encourage these traits in their students?
Below are some strategies to enhance learning goals for students. This is not an
exhaustive list, and a quick search online will offer many more innovative ways in
which staff in schools help students to identify the most successful ways to adopt
these goals for themselves. Much of the leap for the student is trust in the
teacher, and the method itself, so real life examples and active, daily
demonstrations work incredibly effectively. By their very nature, many examples
of learning goals in action are stories, which are always much easier to recall than
data points or pithy slogans on motivational posters — though there is always a
place for these too.
Able to elaborate their work
Stretching their work beyond ‘what was asked’ is a perennial challenge for
teachers. Having the children work on improving their own tasks, looking at other
people’s tasks and giving advice and guidance on improvement is a fantastic way
of helping the children to elaborate their work and make them think about
refinement techniques. A key skill here is questioning; asking children deeper
questions which encourage open answers forces the child to think carefully and
judiciously about their choices, justifying decisions and making incremental
improvements.
Well organised
It is easy to appreciate that a well-organised student is more able to learn, and
find teaching more accessible to them. However, organisation skills need to be
taught to the children and demonstrated through highlighting and good practice
in order for the children to understand the benefits of organisation. Some
children find organisation incredibly hard, so streamlining everything they have
to do makes their work improvement rate increase and removes unnecessary
distractions. Make all the equipment that children need to complete a task easily
accessible, labelled if necessary. Highlight this to the class at the beginning of
any task, so they know not only what is available to them and where it is, but also
as a gentle reminder they may need these tools.
2. Plans goals along route
Breaking down one large goal into smaller, more manageable goals, is an
incredibly effective way of measuring progress along a given route. A 1000 word
essay seems far more daunting than 10 100 word written tasks for example. even
in the primary setting, showing an overall goal and encouraging the children to
create smaller key goals along the route will help them to measure their success
and achievement at each stage towards the overall goal.
Observes own performance
We are acutely able to seemingly make judgements on other people’s
performances, often at the cost of our own performance. Indeed, one of my son’s
end-of-year reports stated that he “can sometimes concentrate more on everyone
else’s progress, at a cost of his own,” a phrase which I’m sure would have
appeared on my own school reports at the same age.
Too often, students operate using only two broad questions underlining their
performance:
• What am I doing now?
• What do I have to do next?
These are fairly closed questions, and are rather simple to ask oneself. What they
give no indication of is a measure of how they can improve either of the ‘what’
statements. They are functional and offer no measure of performance technique.
By encouraging students to adjust these regular self questions, we can
encourage them to become better observers at their own performance. This of
course depends on them changing their course, should they need to, rather than
ploughing on in a direction which completes the task set without making any
change, however small or incremental. Consider these two questions instead:
• How am I getting on now?
• How can I change what I am doing to ensure I am achieving the most?
With achievement in this last question being both academic achievement
(completing the task) as well as learning achievement (is there anything that can
be done to make my learning more beneficial for the future), these questions go
some way to developing a mentality that performance should be regularly looked
at, analysed and changed if necessary.
The quickest way to do this is to prompt the students to consider these two
questions as they work through a task. Have the two questions written on the
board or on a poster, and stop the class every five minutes to ask them what they
think are the answers, and what they are going to do about each of them. This
tiny change can have very broad implications for deeper learning and
3. understanding within a task, and carrying this out in all lessons will help to lasso
the idea of measuring self-performance in the student’s minds.
Belief that they can achieve
Another popular educational meme is one about failure; “if you knew you
wouldn’t fail, what things would you do?” The answer of course is (or should be)
nothing. There is no point in me attempting to be the world’s fastest man, as I just
don’t have the drive, ambition, ability, determination, body shape or required
narcissism to achieve this. I will cope.
How many of our students feel that many of the challenges they are set are
beyond them, and don’t attempt to achieve because they already know that
despite everything they do, they are heading helplessly toward failure? To answer
this, we need to question the way in which the student both is given their self-
belief, and also in the way that achievement is positioned within our classroom
culture.
One simple device I have used in the past is the “Portfolio of Excellence.” This was
a large ring-bound folder of past student work. It was known by the students to
exist, and they were regularly shown completed tasks be former students. The
impact it had was incredible in helping the students believe that they could
achieve. Not only could they see examples of work which former students had
done, it was also shown what good completed work looked like; the task was
achievable.
After trialling this in my own classroom, I rolled this out across the school for all
subjects. This had the added benefits of not only helping teachers to align what
they accepted as good work (“is this work good enough to go in the Portfolio of
Excellence?”) which in turn fed down to the students as a form of carrot; would
their work be good enough to go into the Portfolio.
In addition, these folders produced an excellent set of examples of good practice
for Inspectors to look at when they inevitably visited my school. They could see
both our expectations of the students and these expectations delivered in work.
This was our work ethos exemplified in practice, and enabled us to secure the
highest rating against their criteria.
• Enjoyment of tasks and learning
This seems to be so obvious as to not warrant even mentioning, and yet how do
we know, or even measure, whether a student is enjoying learning or not? To my
mind, enjoyment equates to actual desire to learn, rather than have the learning
somehow foisted upon them. As Dave Burgess puts it in his 2012 book, ‘Teach
Like a Pirate’, “If students had the choice of attending your lessons, how many
would be empty?”
4. This is not, I should emphasise, to provide teaching which is somehow
entertaining or of such a performance that the teacher takes precedence over
learning. Rather, providing tasks and learning which hooks in the students’
interest and curiosity in the given subject all help to contribute to enjoyment; we
can go back to considering learning to be like the ‘charged’ self-propelling toy
car rather than the one which we are constantly having to nudge along.
Enjoyment is hard to measure and yet easy to identify; it is that moment where
students have their own drive to continue, ask questions and want to progress at
a rate which matches or exceeds the teacher’s own expectations. Given two tasks
to do at home, I am almost always more likely to select the one which I derive
more pleasure from, but these are all context driven to a certain extent (note how
tidy my house is during report-writing time for example).
Rather than considering if the work or learning is ‘fun,’ ask instead if the work
arouses enough interest or curiosity to encourage an independent drive from the
students to want to know more or contribute more.
Positive reactions to tasks
There should be a reaction to all tasks whether positive or negative. It is the
adjustment of focus for this which enables us as teachers to identify whether this
reaction is positive or not. Simply completing a task because it has been set
seems to be a more common pattern in school. That is not to criticise the teacher
for setting tasks, but encouraging and enabling a positive reaction to tasks in the
classroom setting so that it goes some way to matching the enthusiasm and
positivity which students exhibit outside the classroom (toward their hobbies for
example) offers short term gains and much larger long-term benefits.
One measure of adeptness the teacher can have is to ‘read’ the reaction of a task
from the students. If they are raring to go, and forsake lesson niceties in order to
begin the task, we can be aware that this particular task has ‘got them.’ Likewise, if
a task can be aligned with one of their preferred working styles, and it is not
detrimental to their learning opportunities, a teacher would be wise to marry
these two together.
One colleague, knowing the set text she was asked by the exam board to teach
was tricky to access, instead covered the initial grounds using character study,
different situations involving dilemmas and some initial historical grounding
before introducing the set text. In this way, she was able to allow the students
make the connection between their interests (which had been fed) to the text,
rather than jumping straight into a challenging text to begin with. As a result, she
gained much greater buy-in from her students.
5. High effort and persistence
These are really two leaves of the same plant, and in my experience can both be
much misunderstood by the students in class. What actually is high effort? When
asking students what they thought this meant, the few I spoke to came back with
“working harder.” This is a pat phrase however; almost devoid of meaning when it
is considered. To give an example, imagine a student is completing a page of
long division sums. Using this concept of “work harder,” what do we actually
expect the students to do?
• complete more sums
• work faster
• get less distracted
• finish faster than others
Of these four reasons, perhaps only the one about distraction has any validity.
Working faster can often lead to mistakes in some tasks. So what is high effort?
The dictionary definition of “effort” is that of a ‘determined attempt,’ which is
contrary to many of the work harder strategies listed above. Effort in this sense
isn’t skipping the hard question, or hoping the answer you have placed is right
without checking it — it is taking a pause and taking stock and telling yourself (as a
student) if you have approached that particular challenge as one to successfully
beat, or one which may get a cross, but which doesn’t really matter.
This is of course incredibly hard to do. Given the example above, but especially
when all the class are completing the same broad task, it seems to be only natural
when set that the aim of the task is to ‘complete the sheet’ rather than ‘refine your
long division method.’ again, what does this actually mean for a student? To my
mind, this could be expanded as:
• secure your understanding of long division across a range of examples
• Recognise errors through self-checking
• Place this method against a range of contexts (ie in word problems, real life
problems and in solving long divisions in other subjects).
Instead, what can often happen is we mark the work, highlighting the errors and
asking the student to repeat them. This is when the cost of marking after a lesson,
rather than during a lesson has a great cost. It’s rather like driving from Halfords
after an MOT, then at home being told you need new bulbs. The learning MOT
needs to be carried out within the lesson.
One successful strategy I have used to great effect in this type of task is to scan
the work covered by the student and tell them that they have made three errors —
but not tell them where they are. Cynics of my analogies might at this juncture
6. point out that this is akin to failing your MOT but not being told what your car has
failed on — which is a fair charge if I’m honest.
What I have found however is that it makes the student go over their work again
in a slightly frustrated but different mentality, that of a fact-checker rather than a
task-completer. It is very difficult for students to utilise these two strategies next to
each other, which is broadly speaking what more effort requires, yet encouraging
this practice is really beneficial for the students.
Having the students write ‘checked’ and signing their names against every
column or row might work as a way of both encouraging them to focus on
checking, whilst making them accountable for the checking, rather than the
teacher.
Persistence is rather different — this is a mark of doggedness to complete, rather
than giving up. As a semi-professional procrastinator, who can argue that any
failure in productivity is the fault of either hunger pangs or Netflix, I know only too
well that our resistance to proceed diminishes when we find something hard. So
where does grit come from; that desire to continue despite adversity?
To my mind, it firstly needs the acknowledgement that work should be
intrinsically hard. There is almost no charm in work being easy to complete.
Struan Robertson, in his book ‘Lower your life handicap’ wrote that the ability to
get a hole-in-one at every golf course would remove the central pleasure of golf
itself. The key aspect here is removing the sense of helplessness that situations
making someone feel they can’t proceed, and allowing them to recognise what
they need to do next — and just getting on with it!
This message isn’t well-received by students or adults however — as I can
personally identify. Persistence, coupled with self-goals such as self-motivation
and self-evaluation, can help enormously. This can be done by asking oneself a
few questions, namely:
• What am I stuck on?
• What is preventing me from giving my all?
• What can I change to make me continue?
By answering these questions honestly, both you and the student can help to
redefine persistence and ensure that you both are working on a task or goal
which can be broken down into much more manageable chunks.
Seeks academic help
There seems to be a drive toward independent learning which puts the teacher at
the end of the asking circuit — “see three before me” and so on. The overarching
aim of this is to encourage students to think beyond simply putting their hands
up and asking questions that perhaps they or a peer know the answer to. The
7. danger of this well-intentioned guidance as this it places the teacher at the far
end of support. While this is worthy, it does force a certain isolation for the
teacher as some knowledge deity who should not be disturbed at all costs.
This is a pattern which appears to grow in stature as students get older. Rather
than it being reversed, teachers should be viewed as accessible, especially for
certain tasks and activities. What should a teacher be viewed as, which is a source
for guidance beyond “which question is next?” and rather tackles worries the
student may have, or helps to unlock the next level of learning. Teachers
therefore need to ensure that students do see them as a source of academic
assistance; that they are approachable and accessible for the learning.
— -
This is an extract from “Thinking about Thinking: Learning Habits Explored,” by
Stephen Lockyer, and available from Amazon.