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!