5 Ways to Get Reluctant Learners to Engage in Learning

1.     Lighten Up-  Start talking to the child about anything.  Get the conversation flowing about what is happening with them and what they are interested in at the moment.  Forget about the schoolwork that needs to be done and just talk.  A connection will form and the child will feel more comfortable about opening up.  Students that are not confident learners have learned many ways to avoid learning and talking.  They do not feel that their ideas are interesting or worth sharing.  It is our job to convince them that they are.  This may take a bit.  Asking them questions about their interests, family, friends and life is a way to start.  Don’t forget to share about your life as well.  You might find that you and the student have a lot in common.  Wouldn’t that be great?

2.     Connect the dots-  Throughout your conversation, make connections with the learning topic.  Children have a hard time finding linkages between the content that they are learning and their real life.  This is one of the reasons that children have such a hard time understanding classical literature.  The language that is used is very foreign to them.  If you can synthesize the information and interpret it to the student in his or her own modern language, they will appreciate it and will engage.  You can often see the “a-ha” expression emerge on their face.  The story will finally make sense.  They will understand that people in the story were going through the same types of things that people in our era go through.  They just used different language to express it.   Helping the child understand that they are much like the children of past decades will help them relate to the story in a meaningful way. Connections lead to understanding and retention!

3.     Keep it real-  Some students need very concrete details regarding how what they are learning relates to their everyday life.  When teaching concepts, use details that they will understand.  Use names of siblings in math story problems.  Make up silly characters that align with the child’s life but have different names.  Don’t forget pets! 

4.     Offer Specific Feedback- Find every single possible thing that they are doing right and praise them on it. Even if they simply remembered to capitalize the letter starting the sentence or add a question mark at the end of a question.  They need to hear the good and understand that they are able to do some things on their own without you telling them.  This feedback needs to be specific.  “Great Job” and “well done” will not do.  Take time to read it over and pull out the specific things that they have done correctly.  If spelling is poor and you cannot find a single sentence that has correct punctuation, compliment the ideas expressed in the piece of writing.  Is the piece funny?  Is it something that you did not know before?  Comment on it.  The student needs to know that you took the time to read it and that you noticed details about it.  After significant praising about all of the good stuff going on in their work, then you can start to guide them on the items that need work.  Use, what I call, the “Sandwich” technique.  This technique, leads with a compliment and then guide with constructive feedback and then finish with another compliment.  For example, I love the amount of details that you have in this sentence.  To help the ideas flow, we just need to separate them with commas and then add a period at the end of the sentence.  Then this sentence will flow just like this one up here does.  Or Wow!, you really understand how to keep your numbers lined up when doing these multiplication problems.  Most kids don’t get that.  Another tip to keep your place will be to add a zero to start your second row numbers which pushes everything over one place.  All of your other numbers look just as they should to be added correctly.  Well done!

5.  Show off-  Offer the child the opportunity to teach someone what they know.  You will definitely need to judge their comfort level on this one.  However, even if they are not interested in teaching another person directly, they may be interested in creating a poster, instruction manual, video, audio, etc. documenting the steps that they took to figure out the concept.  A few things happen when you use this technique.  Having the child explain the process that they went through to learn the concept, including the pitfalls and their resolutions for them, solidifies their learning of the concept.  This exercise is also an incredible boost to the child’s self esteem.  Many children are always the ones that need the help.  Rarely are they able to give someone help.  You will understand the effect of this when you are able to see the body language and look on a child’s face that gets his first chance to help.  I cannot explain it.  It is priceless!

Deconstructing a Discussion Thread Post

 

Discussion posts can be particularly troublesome for struggling students.  It is typically because they are being asked for their opinion or their thoughts about how a particular topic applies to a certain situation.  This is double trouble for a student that is not a confident learner.  The first task of having to share their opinion on a topic can be enough to shut down operations.  This is typically because, this “type” of student has learned over time that their answers are never or rarely completely right.  A teacher almost always needs to “fix” what they are doing or saying at some point.  This can chip away at the student’s confidence and have the child think that their opinions are not good enough on their own.   

Average to above average students have experiences in which their work is critiqued and corrected as well.  However, they also have several assignments that need minimal revisions sprinkled in.  These experiences have a profound effect to keep self-esteem boosted appropriately.  They are able to effectively keep perspective.  They understand that some of their work will  need a lot of revision and other pieces will need minimal revision.  This is normal and it should not knock them off of their game.  

Break It Down

The first step to deconstructing a discussion thread post is to break it up into manageable parts. 

  

 Consider the following prompt:

Professional athletes and a-list celebrities get paid millions of dollars. Do they deserve to get paid as much as they do? Some argue that they do not do enough to earn that money or that it could be put to much better use. Others think they should be rewarded for their talent.

As I have shared in my Deconstructing Writing Prompts article, I recommend changing the font and/or color of the key points and areas that the student is to focus on in the discussion post.   The purpose of picking out the key points is to get the student’s emotions engaged and focus these emotions and thoughts towards addressing the prompt. 

Discussion thread topics can bring about very emotional responses.  Critical topics such as:  addressing the topic, stating opinion clearly and including factual basis to support the opinion must be taught to keep kids on track.   

Students should also be prepared for challenges to their opinions.  They must learn to accept questions and challenges, gather any additional information and respond in a respectful and articulate way. 

In addition to accepting challenges to their thinking, students need to be taught how to appropriate challenge other people's thinking.  In order to keep the conversation going, responses to posts need to be respectful, informational, and thought provoking.  This is a very difficult skill for children and adults because we, of course, think our way is the right way just “because we know that it is!”.  

Organizing Ideas

As all of the ideas are flowing and being generated, it is helpful to put them in some form or structure.  I have shared my template for a discussion topic here:

Depending on the level of the student, your template will contain more or less prompts for information.  The activity should always set students up for success.  This may mean that their responses are very scripted in the beginning. The teacher would write up a pre-prepared response and remove a handful words.  If necessary, I would recommend including those and other words in a word bank that is included on the page for the student to refer to.  

With proper supports and models, students will pick up on this system quickly.  Eventually, the teacher will not need to have as many supports in place for them to write a response on their own.  We just need a template, like the one above, to get them into the routine and show them that they do have the skills necessary to do this and it is not as overwhelming as they think!

Happy deconstructing!

Colleen

Deconstructing Writing Prompts

 Writing prompts are really challenging for students.  It is almost like a deer in the headlights.  They are given a writing prompt and their mind goes blank.  Or even worse, the anxiety starts.  The self-defeating thoughts come rushing in.  Goodness, students know how to beat themselves up, don’t they?  This breaks my heart.  Writing does not need to be this hard.  Students always have the information inside of them.  They often just do not know that they do.  I am excited to share with you some strategies that I have used to get those ideas out of reluctant writers and help them come up with some incredible writing.  Want to boost a kid’s self esteem?  Show them that they know how to write!  In this article, I will be sharing how to deconstruct a writing prompt and make it manageable and palatable for students.  Then we will get into how to get students thinking about the topic, churning ideas and organizing them into a rough draft.  Finally, I will share out some resources that I have used to get this all done. 

Getting to the Meat of the Matter

The first step with teaching kids to deconstruct a writing prompt is to pull it apart into manageable parts.  Once they see that it is not so big and overwhelming, you will get them to continue on with you through the process.  So, how do we pull apart a writing prompt?  Lets look at a few sample prompts at different levels:

3^rd grade:  Tell about a special place that you have visited. 

5^th grade:  We all need help sometimes.  Write a story about a time when someone helped you.

8^th grade:  What are the main benefits of the Internet to society?

10^th grade:  Recently a citizen’s group proposed a change to the rules for obtaining a driver’s license.  The group has proposed that high school students have at least a “B” average in order to get a driver’s license.  Take a position on this proposal.  Write a letter to the editor of your local paper to convince voters to agree with your position.

We can see that as the grade level increases, the prompts become more complex and ask for more detail.  Let’s start pulling the important parts out.  This step is key to convince students that this is truly manageable and do-able!  A great way to pull out the essential pieces of a prompt is to change the color of key words or even change the font.   See the examples below:

3^rd grade:  Tell about a special place that you have visited. 

5^th grade:  We all need help sometimes.  Write a story about a time when someone helped you.

8^th grade:  What are the main benefits of the Internet to society?

10^th grade:  Recently a citizen’s group proposed a change to the rules for obtaining a driver’s license.  The group has proposed that high school students have at least a “B” average in order to get a driver’s license.  Take a position on this proposal.  Write a letter to the editor of your local paper to convince voters to agree with your position.

Having the child do this as part of the “deconstructing” process is very helpful.  Let them get as creative as they would like.  Part of the point here is to get them to engage in this process.  If they want to draw stars, flowers or color the words pink with green polka dots….let them!  This step is particularly helpful for your visual and kinesthetic learners.  They need to interact with the material in order to truly understand.  Having the key pieces of the prompt standing out in a different font or color, immediately brings the eye back to them when children forget what they are to do.  This happens often and kids will appreciate that the information is clearly displayed when they need to come back to it.

  

Organizing Thoughts

Now that we have the essential pieces of the prompt indicated, it is time to get the student thinking.  This can be the tough part.  Most times, you will be met with “I don’t know” or “ that never happened to me” statements when you ask them about the prompts.  A way to get the conversation started is to share a personal story about yourself.  Has something in the prompt every happened to you?  Talk about it! This is a great method to connect with kids.  Students love learning about their teachers and getting to know them as real people.  Now, they will not tell you this.  So, if you do not hear them thank you for sharing details about you and your life, don’t stop doing it.  It has more of an effect than you will ever know.  Students will start to think about how their situations relate to yours and suddenly will have details to share. 

If you still are not getting anything, share some details that you know about them.  Details about their family, experiences in school, interests, hobbies, etc.  Reminding them of the experiences that they have to pull from can definitely get related ideas flowing.  Plus, they will be touched that you know about them.  Guaranteed connection method here.  Hopefully by using these two methods, kids will start to talk.  However, be patient. Students are usually a bit rusty when asked to share about their lives.  Asking probing questions and keeping the conversation light will really get you to chatting. 

If you still are not getting much from the child, you might want to play the devil’s advocate.  Present a challenging situation to the child.  This would be a position that the child would most likely disagree with.  Sometimes, self-esteem issues get in the way of students sharing what they feel, like or believe in.  They are afraid that their ideas will not be accepted.  They tend to share a bit more about the things that they disagree with.  They can usually rely on the concepts of right and wrong as a safe way to put their opinions out there. 

So during all of this brainstorming, we need to be putting these ideas into some format.  My suggestion for this is to use the K.I.S.S.  theory.  Keep It Super Simple is the way to go.  Take a look at the examples below:

 

These graphic organizers were made by me for students that I have worked with.  Although there are a lot resources out there to use, I prefer making my own.  Depending on how our brainstorming is going, it will change they way I set up the organizer.  Pre made organizers do not allow the flexibility that I prefer.  Creating a template with as many “triggers” in the beginning is the best way to go.  These are comfortable and friendly reminders that prompt students to do what needs to be done.  When you have a reluctant writer, you cannot have too many.  They should be set up to succeed and have no chance to become frustrated and then over time remove these prompts in future organizers.  Adding a word bank to the side of the organizer is also extremely helpful to students and will help ensure success!

Happy Deconstructing!