Monthly Archives: February 2016

02/29/16

When Children Say ‘I Can’t’ But They Can

The title of this article spoke to me right away because I experienced this within my own practicum classroom. I saw students who were completely capable of completing simple tasks one day, to becoming frustrated and saying that they couldn’t do it the next day. Hopefully, you can see the connection between my experience and my inquiry question.  The particular article addresses the question: How do you deal with “feigned incompetence in previously capable, competent children?” To answer this question, the author argues that there are a wide range of explanations for this behaviour. Some students are afraid of failure or they feel that there is a need to maintain an image of effortless perfection to their teacher and classmates. Other students, especially those who suffer from anxiety, feel as if they cannot control the outcomes in their life, so they give up before they begin to avoid disappointment, frustration, or embarrassment. To help combat this, the article suggests that teachers and parents should encourage anxious students to face difficult situations while empowering them to work through their anxiety. Anxious students need to face their fears in order to internalize the belief that they can overcome obstacles and control outcomes.

The trick is to prevent students from developing “learned incompetence”, which is when students act incompetent in order to get help from their teacher. These students know from experience that if they stall or refuse to do something they don’t want to do, someone will eventually do it for them. The trick is to know when to hold back and let students struggle a bit, and when to help out when a task is truly beyond their ability.

Reference:

Lahey, J. (January 13, 2016). When children say ‘I can’t’, but they can, and adults know it. New York Times. Retrieved from http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/01/13/when-children-say-i-cant-but-they-can-and-adults-know-it/?WT.mc_id=2016-KWP-INTL_AUD_DEV&WT.mc_ev=click&ad-keywords=IntlAudDev&kwp_0=101034&_r=0

02/24/16

Post-Living Inquiry Reflection

Today’s Living Inquiry was a success! While there are many cohorts within the Elementary program, we rarely ever get to interact cross-cohort. Having this opportunity to get to know other people from another cohort was a fun and engaging experience. I got to learn a new strategy from a couple SEL TCs after I told them that some of my Grade 1 students struggle in writing in their planners. They suggested that I print out some slips of paper to give to those students, because often times they cannot see the board or get distracted by those walking in front of the board. That was a great suggestion, my only concern is that if I do that for one student, I would most likely have to do it for all of my students. Nonetheless, I will have this discussion when I get back to my practicum classroom next week! Overall, Living Inquiry was a great opportunity to socialize and connect with other TCs with similar interests. Thank you to Yvonne Dawydiak and Claire Rushton for organizing this.

02/24/16

Wise Wednesday’s: How to Help Students Who Don’t Like School

Welcome back to Wise Wednesday’s! It has been a busy week as our long practicum is just about a month away. Nonetheless, I am here to discuss another book written by Daniel Willingham, titled Why Don’t Students Like School? The title itself invites for some curiosity, which first caught my attention. However, as I delved deeper into what Willingham argues within his book, I realized that his discussion provides some insight into our students who get frustrated in completing classroom activities.

Willingham argues that people like to solve problems, but they do not to solve unsolvable problems (p.4). If schoolwork has become just a little bit too difficult for a student, then they will begin to grow a dislike for school. In relation to this, he argues that humans are bad at thinking and that thinking is usually a slow and arduous process. Willingham uses the example of learning how to drive a car for the first time. When you’re first learning how to drive, you are focusing your attention in steering, accelerating, and braking. Over time and with enough practice, driving begins to become second nature and you begin to barely think about going through the motions as you drive. This does not mean that humans do not like to think, it is just that it does take a long time to learn and process new information. Where trouble lies is when people (such as our students) are working on a problem for a long time, yet there is no sense that there is any progress that has been made (p.9). I think we can all think of a time when this has happened to us.

So what does Willingham suggest? Ensure that you give enough necessary background knowledge before you ask your students to begin a task, meaning: scaffold, scaffold, scaffold. Further, when necessary, give “cognitive breaks” to students (p.19). I perhaps did not realize this, but we do ask a lot out of our students during the school day – even for students in primary grades. It is understanding how some students may become more frustrated with their work as the day goes on because they have used a lot of their cognitive skills to stay focused throughout the day. This brings in the importance of having brain breaks scheduled in during the day, to allow children to stop and do a quick, fun activity that will re-energize the students.

I see many connections between Willingham’s discussion and my experience to my practicum school. I have seen first-hand the implications of failing to scaffold enough for my students (as a result of my teaching). Many students became frustrated and needed extra help from me. Thankfully, I have learned my lesson! I appreciate how much scaffolding I see being done in my classroom and it is something that I continue in trying to implement within my unit plans. I am constantly asking myself whether I am providing my students with enough knowledge and information in order to guarantee success for all of my students.

Reference:

Willingham, D.T. (2009). Why don’t students like school? A cognitive science answers questions about how the mind works and what it means for the classroom. San Fransico: Jossey-Bass.

02/22/16

Wise Wednesday’s: How To Support Our Struggling Students

 

For this week’s Wise Wednesday’s post, I wanted to draw your attention to an informative book that I have found by Robyn Jackson called, Mastering the Principles of Great Teaching: How to Support Struggling Students. What drew my attention to this book was that the book was written in a way that was very relatable to myself as an emerging educator. As my inquiry question may indicate, I do have a few struggling students – this experience is relatable to many teachers, I am sure. As Jackson says in her Introduction chapter, “All teachers have had that moment in the classroom where we’ve just finished explaining what we thought was a simple concept and then see our students staring blankly back, completely lost. We have all experienced the frustration that comes when students continue to struggle and constantly lag behind.” (p.13) Does this sound familiar to anyone?

Jackson provides readers with many different practical strategies that educators can use to ensure that even our most struggling students are succeeding within our classroom. She discusses strategies that have been touched on in this blog, such as having support for the students, meaning that teachers are guiding students throughout the entire learning progress, through modeling and scaffolding, and for preparing for instances when students may struggle with certain concepts. In these cases, it is imperative that teachers set up opportunities prior to the summative assessment, for students to re-engage with the material and to learn the things that they missed. I believe that providing for these different opportunities of learning similar concepts will help alleviate the anxiety and frustration among students in the classroom. I have seen this happen at my own practicum school, where there is a lot of scaffolding provided to my students. Key concepts are constantly being repeated and students get a lot of time to play and work with the topic. I know that when I was in elementary school, I had often become frustrated with learning math concepts. Word problems in particular were difficult for me, and it was a frustrating process. I was not given the opportunities to re-engage with the material and to re-learn the things that I had missed. To this day, word problems in math continue to be one of my biggest struggles.

One of the biggest positives in the book is the discussion about how teachers should keep their students in mind when planning a lesson or unit. It really is about knowing your students, such as knowing what their skills and struggles are, and what kind of prior knowledge they bring into the classroom. Jackson brings up this excellent point: “Students who struggle because of a lack of background knowledge don’t have the vocabulary or the experiences they need to make sense of new information.” (p.18) This diagnostic assessment is critical in preventing students from feeling frustrated right off the bat in a new unit, for example. This is something that I will definitely be keeping in mind during my practicum. Asking myself questions such as: “What kind of prior knowledge do my students have?” and “What are some struggles that some students may have?” will help me to give the support that all of my students need in order to help prevent frustration and instead, create success for my students.

 

Reference:

Jackson, R. R., & Lambert, C. (2010). Mastering the principles of great teaching: How to support struggling students. Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development (ASCD).

 

02/12/16

Practicum Reflection: How Does a Frustrated Student Look Like?

Over the past weeks, I have discussed the different strategies of how teachers can build self-confidence and grit among the students. I have also delved into how building a positive classroom environment is essential in fostering these characteristics within students. I believe that now is a good time to take a step further and apply these strategies into students who get frustrated in completing classroom activities. But first, why do students get frustrated in the first place? What are some things that are going on in their minds when they feel defeated? I touched on this piece a little bit a couple months ago when I discussed the fight, flight, or freeze response in frustrated students.

To give a more concrete and practical example of an example of this process, I turn to my practicum school. On Thursday, I led an art activity with my Grade 1 students, where they had to create a fish made out of hearts. As I am quickly learning, art activities can be very loud and there is a lot going on at once – for a teacher candidate, this scenario can often be very intimidating! For the most part, the students did enjoy doing the activity, with some students asking if they could take home their fish that day. Nonetheless, there were some bumps along the way. One significant bump was that a couple students became visibly frustrated when they struggled with making heart shapes for the fish’s tail and head. These students were experiencing the “freeze” response, where they had come to the conclusion that they could not do it and in response, they sat on the floor or at their desks with their heads down. I gave them independent attention and walked through with them the steps on how to draw a heart and brought my own example that I used to demonstrate so that they could see the example closer up. In future, if there are multiple students who are struggling, instead of giving independent attention to each student, I  will instead gather the students together and walk through the steps as a group. This would prevent me from jumping from student to student and it would also help to ensure that students who are struggling, get the teacher support that they need in a timely manner.

By going through the process of my inquiry and of being at my practicum school, I am learning that there are many different elements that must come into place in order to help not only build a supportive classroom environment but to also help students build confidence to succeed within the classroom. Perhaps part of the issue is that there are many students and only one to two teachers in a classroom. For students who need extra support, it can be difficult as a teacher, to provide that constant support. This is why my inquiry question is so important to me, as a teacher candidate. I want to build that self-confidence in all of my students so that they do not get frustrated in the first place.

Reference:

Minahan, J., & Schultz, J.J. (2014;2015). Interventions can salve unseen anxiety barriers. Phi Delta Kappan, 96(4), 46-50. Doi: 10.1177/0031721714561446

02/5/16

Wise Wednesday’s: Let’s Get (More) Gritty

Ah, it feels so good to have February upon us. The days are getting longer and we are much more closer to seeing some more sunny days. Last week, I introduced grit and its role in the classroom. I want to expand and go more in depth on grit, not only because it fits well into my inquiry question, but also because it’s such an important thing to teach to our students.

Thus, I bring to you some wise words, spoken by Angela Lee Duckworth, a Grade 7 educator, who explains her theory on grit and its relationship to the success of her students. She poses the challenge that schools measure only the IQ of their students, but intelligence can only go so far in one’s life. What builds long-term success within students after they leave school and enter the working world, is grit. Grit drives students to achieve their goals, to persevere in the face of adversity. Duckworth says that teachers can help promote grit through encouraging a growth mindset. She says that teachers should show their students that the brain changes and grows in response to challenge and that failure is not permanent. As a result, students are more likely to persevere when they fail. Building a growth mindset along with encouraging grit, is a step in the right direction but as Duckworth argues, we need more. We need different ways of measuring student success that is not solely based on IQ scores or on intelligence.

If you would like to do some further reading, there is an article that is written by Corey Donahue that goes into some more discussion about Duckworth’s beliefs in grit. Article can be accessed here: http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/blog/helping-students-succeed-by-building-grit/

Reference:

Ducksworth, A. (April 2013). Angela Lee Duckworth: The key to success? Grit. [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/angela_lee_duckworth_the_key_to_success_grit?language=en#t-355670