When Students are Engaged, Grades Don't Matter

       My daughter's girl scout group had their annual Thinking Day recently.  Thinking Day is a special annual day when Girl Scouts around the world think of each other and express their thanks and appreciation for the International Girl Scouts organization.  Since my daughter is in high school, her group was tasked with creating a game or activity for the younger girl scouts to do.  They decided to do a Lifesize Hungry Hungry Hippo game.

       The game has four competitors who begin the game in one corner of a square floor space with lots of small balloon in the middle of the square.  Each competitor is on a scooter facing the middle of the square and holds a laundry basket.  An older girl pushes the competitors towards the middle of the square and their job is to capture as many balloons as possible with their laundry baskets.  A jump rope is tied to each scooter and the older girls pull the competitors back to their original corner and collect the balloons they have captured.  This continues for one minute.  The person with the most balloons wins.

       My daughter set up a white board to keep track of the number of balloon caught by each competitor.  But after a few rounds it became clear that no cared who "won" the game because it was so much fun just to play the game.  The points didn't matter.  There was a line of girls waiting to play the game.  Girls came back again and again to play Hungry Hungry Hippos.  Parents were taking pictures and videos.  The game is fun and exciting and full of action.  Everyone could participate and everyone had fun.

       In education circles, we refer to this scenario as Student Engagement.  When students are engaged in the activity that takes place in their classroom, the "grade" becomes much less important and the "learning" becomes much more important.  Students want to finish the task or express their viewpoint or add to the discussion.  They become so engrossed in the activity that other matters such as grades and the remaining time in the class and social media and all of the things that distract students when they are bored suddenly become invisible.

       This sort of engagement doesn't have to be a rare occurrence for our students in school.  In fact, teachers who understand the value of student engagement strive to find and to create activities that engage their students intellectually and emotionally and even physically everyday.  Students who are engaged are more likely to do their best everyday.  They are less likely to zone out and doze off in class.   Some strategies for engaging students are simple and basic such as:

• calling on every students every day
• allowing a time in every class for students to get out of their seat
• getting to know every students and establishing a good relationship with each student
• dividing each class period into several 5 to 15 minute sections with different activities in each class section (such as: whole group discussion, individual work, small group work)

Other strategies involve more preparation such playing a game to review material, using manipulatives in a math lesson, students using technology for part of a lesson.  The 20th century classroom with a teacher doing all of the talking is not the best way to conduct a classroom if you want all students to achieve.  When students are engaged, students are learning.  While teachers are not responsible for creating an entertaining environment in their classroom, they are responsible for motivating their students to do their best.

       Every student should be Hungry Hungry for learning.

The Case Against Worksheets

The Case Against Worksheets

       The "worksheet" has been a staple of the P-12 educational experience for students for the past 30 to 40 years--maybe longer.  The advent of the mimeograph machine and then the photocopier made the duplicating of massive amount of worksheets easy, cheap, and increasing common.  Today there are multiple websites with pre-made worksheets for math, reading, geography, science, and just about any other school subject.  Some teachers love using worksheets.  Some use a worksheet everyday or nearly everyday.  In middle and high school math classes, students sitting in rows in the classroom and independently completing 20 or more math problems on a worksheet is an iconic image that many parents remember as a child and still expect to happen to their children today.

       The problem with the massive use of worksheets in today's classrooms is that they represent the opposite of everything we now know about how students learn best and what we hope to accomplish in our schools.  Math worksheets in particular go against many of the tenets of good learning and good teaching.  Here is my short list of why worksheets are a poor choice for today's classrooms:

1. Worksheets are boring.
2. Worksheets discourage students from working and learning together.
3. Worksheets are often very low on the rigor scale.

Boring

       I often say to my teachers that it isn't our job to entertain students, but it is part of our responsibility to motivate students to do their best.  The old days of the teachers who basically use the "Because I say so" theory of teaching is over.  Students may do what they are told, but they won't like it.  So the next question is, "Why do we care if the students 'like it' or not."  And the answer is student engagement.  The Glossary of Education Reform says the following about students engagement:

...the concept of "students engagement" is predicated on the belief that learning improves when students are inquisitive, interested, or inspired, and that learning tends to suffer when students are bored, dispassionate, disaffected, or otherwise "disengaged."

       Simply put, there is no educational reason for a student to complete 20 (basically) identical math problems.  If they know how to do solve the problem, then completing about three should provide sufficient evidence that they can do it.  If they don't know how to solve the problem, then they won't be able to solve 20 problems.  Or, they will make the same mistake 20 times and be very upset to discover this mistake the next day when the class goes over the answers.

Students Working Together

       When there are 30 students sitting in class and learning something new, most won't fully understand everything there is to know about the new learning right away.  Some will try to link the new learning to past learning; some will try to memorize the steps or the procedures; some will just take notes and not really understand anything right away.  When the teacher assigns classwork that is meant to be done independently, students have a lot of questions.  Some will ask their questions, but most won't because they don't want the teacher to think that they don't get it; or they don't want their classroom peers to think that they are stupid.  Some students won't even know what questions to ask.

       However, when students are encouraged to work in groups of (say) two to four students AND when they are encouraged to ask each other questions, they are much more likely to ask their question(s) and to help each other.  Each person in the group may understand a different piece of the new learning and together they can help each other.  Additionally, we know that when students can explain what they are doing, they understand the concepts much better than when they merely answer questions or solve problems independently.

Rigor

       Although not always the case, worksheets tend to emphasize low-level, procedural skills such as following steps to solve a problem, or defining a word, or finding a fact from a reading passage.  While we want students to have these skills, I question the need to constantly repeat this (worksheet) activity for the purpose of helping students to gain these skills.  In today's classrooms, we want to emphasize thinking and reasoning and problem solving.  We want students to recognize particular situations that require particular skills or procedures.

• What formula do I need for this problem?
• What further information do I need to determine before I move forward?
• I'm not sure what to do, but I'll try this first and see what happens and progress based on this "first try" experience.

       In the math world, we now use activities called Math Tasks.  (For some great examples, see youcubed, nrich, (also here), and MARS.)  Math tasks cover the same content as worksheets, but they require more than merely asking students to repeat what they heard a few minutes ago when the initial lesson was taught.  Good math tasks begin with some basic information and slowly increase the level of rigor as the tasks goes on.  Students spend the same amount of time in class on a math task as they would on a worksheet, but instead of doing the same thing over and over (20 or more times), they are pushed to think about the new learning in new ways.

       This sort of rigor is better suited for students to work in groups than to work individually.  Group work is more amenable to higher-level problem solving that requires input and ideas from multiple people.  The group members can discuss and debate the different solution methods and (hence) they can gain a stronger understanding of concept or standard being discussed.


        I could go on...

       Worksheets, at their worst, are used to keep students busy during precious class time.  In fact, many students refer to worksheets as "busy work".  Even the students know that (sometimes) teachers are just using worksheets to fill time in the class.  And this is time that could be better spent with student-to-student discourse or whole-class discourse at much higher levels than the simple worksheet could ever achieve.  Worksheets do not promote learning beyond simple recall and following procedures.

       Worksheets are "old school".  Worksheets do not prepare our students for their future.  Worksheets should be (very) infrequently used in today's classrooms if we truly intend to prepare our students for life after high school.

Motivation and Student Engagement

       We always say that there is no "silver bullet" to getting kids to learn and be successful in school.  There's no secret or magic that helps all students.  Teaching is an art and some people have a way of reaching students better than other people.

       But the truth is that there really is a secret.  Every student can learn and good teachers can get to every student: the quiet student, the reluctant student, the distracted student, the poor student, the sad student, and even the emotionally-challenged student.  There is a way to help all students to learn how to learn.  This secret isn't always taught in teacher preparation classes.  Some teachers know about the secret but refuse to employ it; or struggle to use it every day.  Other teachers seem to use this secret with relative ease; masking the hours of effort and preparation they have put into it prior to class time.  The secret is motivation and student engagement.

       For most students who struggle in school, it isn't that they lack the ability to learn.  More often it is that they lack the desire to learn.  They haven't been given a good reason to learn.  They receive very uninspirational messages such as:  "You have to go to school."  "It's your job to go to school."  "I know it's hard, but you have to do it."  "Math is dull and boring, but that's just the way it is."  "It's the law that you have to go to school."  "Just do it and get it over with."  (And so on.)  These messages might be OK for very little children who are more accustomed to doing what they are told to do from their parents and other adults, but by the time kids get to middle school and certainly by the time they get to high school, children need a much better reason to do things other than "Because I say so.".

       Have you noticed that when students like their teachers, they tend to do better in those classes?  Have you ever been surprised that your child is doing great in Social Studies or Foreign Language when they never liked these subjects in the past?  Most of the time it isn't the subject, it's the teacher that made the difference.  And when you ask the child why they are doing so much better, they say that the teachers makes the subject interesting and fun.  An important part of teaching is motivating students to do their best.  Some teachers understand this very well and work hard to find ways to motivate their students.

       This "secret" really isn't a secret to our best educators; but it seems to continue to be a secret to some of our teachers.  Fortunately there are a lot of books and groups and people that can help teachers to learn about student engagement and motivation.  A great place to start is the book Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov.  This book is filled with simple ideas that motivate students.  Another excelled source of information is Robert Marzano's book The Highly Engaged Classroom.  This book explains why it is important to employ student engagement strategies into every classroom and how it helps students to do better in school.  Another popular book on this subject is Teach Like a Pirate by Dave Burgess.  There is also a very popular Twitter chat under the hashtag #TLAP in which teachers talk about their experiences and ideas about student motivation.  Finally, I have to include the book Growth Mindset by Carol Dweck--which is becoming (practically) required reading among teachers that seek to help their students to reach their true potential.

       Of course, teachers who are best at motivating their students have put in many, many hours of reading and classes and training to be good at this.  Every student is different and every school year presents different challenges.  Some teachers are so overwhelmed by the demands of teaching, it can be difficult for them to take the time to learn about student motivation.  However, some teachers believe that the old messages of "you just have to do this" should be good enough motivation for students and they are unwilling to learn about new methods for helping their students to do their best everyday.

       Every student can learn and every teacher can reach every student.  The "secret" is learning about student motivation and student engagement.  It works every time!  If we want to encourage our students to be the best that they can be and help them to reach their potential, we can do this.  Indeed, we must do this.