https://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/03/03/20-strategies-for-motivating-reluctant-learners/
Kathy Perez has decades of experience as a classroom educator, with training in special education and teaching English language learners. She also has a dynamic style. Sitting through her workshop presentation was like being a student in her classroom. She presents on how to make the classroom engaging and motivating to all students, even the most reluctant learners, while modeling for her audience exactly how she would do it. The experience is a bit jarring because it’s so different from the lectures that dominate big education conferences, but it’s also refreshing and way more fun.
Perez says when students are engaged, predicting answers, talking with one another and sharing with the class in ways that follow safe routines and practices, they not only achieve more but they also act out less. And everyone, including the teacher, has more fun.
“If we don’t have their attention, what’s the point?” Perez asked an audience at a Learning and the Brain conference on mindsets.
She’s a big proponent of brain breaks and getting kids moving around frequently during the day. She reminded educators that most kids’ attention spans are about as long in minutes as their age. So a third-grader can concentrate for about eight minutes before losing interest. It’s a teacher’s job to make sure there are lots of quick, effective brain breaks built into the lesson to give children a moment to recalibrate. Perez says teachers must be prepared for a diverse cross section of learners with a large toolkit of strategies for teaching in multiple modalities, with many entry points to participation and content.
PEREZ’ BRAIN-BASED STRATEGIES
1. Don’t Be Boring
“In our engaging classrooms, we have to have a set of procedures and routines,” Perez said. But they don’t have to be boring. She often has students come in and look at a list of adjectives on the board, many of which stretch her students’ vocabularies. She asks them to greet two other students and use one of the adjectives to describe how they are feeling today. The activity gets them up, moving and ready to learn, plus they’ve used a new vocabulary word in relation to themselves, checking in with their community along the way.
2. Vote
Activate students’ brains with a quick round of voting. Perez often puts three learning goals for the day up on the board and asks students to vote for the one they think is most important. All three goals are good ones and there’s no wrong answer. “The reluctant learners get to look around the room and see who else thinks just like them,” Perez said. This quick activity helps create curiosity among students about what each of them is thinking.
3. Set Goals
Perez is also a proponent of both teacher and students setting personal learning goals every day that are achievable, believable and measurable. “Part of reaching that goal is publicizing that goal,” Perez said. Making goal-setting a regular and visible part of one’s teaching practice models it for students. But it’s very important to leave time for students to revisit the goal they set at the end of the day, Perez said. That opportunity to reflect will help them see and value what they did during the day, as well as where they may have fallen short of the goal.
4. Form Groups
Perez constantly asks her students (in this case a group of educators) to break off to share with one another, brainstorm or collaborate, and she always sets a time limit for the conversation, like 72 seconds. “In my classroom I use bizarre time limits and then they think I’m actually watching the clock and they get to it,” Perez said. She finds this promotes more time on task than a generic five-minute time limit, which students know is just as likely to stretch into eight minutes.
5. Quick Writes
Often Perez will throw out a question and ask students to quickly brainstorm on paper as many answers as they can. Then she’ll do a “popcorn share” where students stand up whenever they want and throw out an idea. This could be an alternative to something like “round-robin reading,” which can put reluctant learners in the hot seat. In this case, Perez sets her students up for success by giving them time to brainstorm first — the answers are right in front of them. This strategy has the added value of forcing students to listen closely to their peers, since they don’t know who will pop up next.
6. Focus on the ABCs: Acceptance, Belonging and Community
“Without this set of ABCs, traditional ABCs will not be as successful,” Perez said. She’s aware of the rush to cover content in many schools and classrooms, but says teaching is not about what is covered today, it’s about what is uncovered in students. “Don’t be so standards-driven that you forget the needs of your students,” she said.
7. Continually change the “state” of the classroom
These are changes in who is providing the information, who is doing the talking. Perez likes to say for every 10 minutes of content, teachers need to give students two minutes of “chew time.”
8. Empathize
Keep in mind the students’ perspective and listen when they explain what they need to learn. Take Ned’s Great Eight to heart. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_BskcXTqpM
Kathy Perez has decades of experience as a classroom educator, with training in special education and teaching English language learners. She also has a dynamic style. Sitting through her workshop presentation was like being a student in her classroom. She presents on how to make the classroom engaging and motivating to all students, even the most reluctant learners, while modeling for her audience exactly how she would do it. The experience is a bit jarring because it’s so different from the lectures that dominate big education conferences, but it’s also refreshing and way more fun.
Perez says when students are engaged, predicting answers, talking with one another and sharing with the class in ways that follow safe routines and practices, they not only achieve more but they also act out less. And everyone, including the teacher, has more fun.
“If we don’t have their attention, what’s the point?” Perez asked an audience at a Learning and the Brain conference on mindsets.
She’s a big proponent of brain breaks and getting kids moving around frequently during the day. She reminded educators that most kids’ attention spans are about as long in minutes as their age. So a third-grader can concentrate for about eight minutes before losing interest. It’s a teacher’s job to make sure there are lots of quick, effective brain breaks built into the lesson to give children a moment to recalibrate. Perez says teachers must be prepared for a diverse cross section of learners with a large toolkit of strategies for teaching in multiple modalities, with many entry points to participation and content.
PEREZ’ BRAIN-BASED STRATEGIES
1. Don’t Be Boring
“In our engaging classrooms, we have to have a set of procedures and routines,” Perez said. But they don’t have to be boring. She often has students come in and look at a list of adjectives on the board, many of which stretch her students’ vocabularies. She asks them to greet two other students and use one of the adjectives to describe how they are feeling today. The activity gets them up, moving and ready to learn, plus they’ve used a new vocabulary word in relation to themselves, checking in with their community along the way.
2. Vote
Activate students’ brains with a quick round of voting. Perez often puts three learning goals for the day up on the board and asks students to vote for the one they think is most important. All three goals are good ones and there’s no wrong answer. “The reluctant learners get to look around the room and see who else thinks just like them,” Perez said. This quick activity helps create curiosity among students about what each of them is thinking.
3. Set Goals
Perez is also a proponent of both teacher and students setting personal learning goals every day that are achievable, believable and measurable. “Part of reaching that goal is publicizing that goal,” Perez said. Making goal-setting a regular and visible part of one’s teaching practice models it for students. But it’s very important to leave time for students to revisit the goal they set at the end of the day, Perez said. That opportunity to reflect will help them see and value what they did during the day, as well as where they may have fallen short of the goal.
4. Form Groups
Perez constantly asks her students (in this case a group of educators) to break off to share with one another, brainstorm or collaborate, and she always sets a time limit for the conversation, like 72 seconds. “In my classroom I use bizarre time limits and then they think I’m actually watching the clock and they get to it,” Perez said. She finds this promotes more time on task than a generic five-minute time limit, which students know is just as likely to stretch into eight minutes.
5. Quick Writes
Often Perez will throw out a question and ask students to quickly brainstorm on paper as many answers as they can. Then she’ll do a “popcorn share” where students stand up whenever they want and throw out an idea. This could be an alternative to something like “round-robin reading,” which can put reluctant learners in the hot seat. In this case, Perez sets her students up for success by giving them time to brainstorm first — the answers are right in front of them. This strategy has the added value of forcing students to listen closely to their peers, since they don’t know who will pop up next.
6. Focus on the ABCs: Acceptance, Belonging and Community
“Without this set of ABCs, traditional ABCs will not be as successful,” Perez said. She’s aware of the rush to cover content in many schools and classrooms, but says teaching is not about what is covered today, it’s about what is uncovered in students. “Don’t be so standards-driven that you forget the needs of your students,” she said.
7. Continually change the “state” of the classroom
These are changes in who is providing the information, who is doing the talking. Perez likes to say for every 10 minutes of content, teachers need to give students two minutes of “chew time.”
8. Empathize
Keep in mind the students’ perspective and listen when they explain what they need to learn. Take Ned’s Great Eight to heart. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_BskcXTqpM