Challenging Student Apathy

Cindy Riedl
Mar 14, 2011

If I received a dollar for every teacher who has claimed that his or her students typically do not care about learning and are simply warming the seats in their classroom, I would be a millionaire! This mantra continues to be heard in schools across the country.

The root of the problem lies not with the parents of these students, but with what happens to them once they enter kindergarten. These students begin the school experience without the fear of failure. They have no reason to think that school is not a wonderful place to be! In fact they have been waiting for that ride on the yellow bus for years. They are open to adventure and are ready to engage in the magic of learning. Yet, many of these students begin to experience learning situations that they are ill-equipped to deal with successfully simply because they enter school with limited language skills and the basic life experiences their more fortunate peers are afforded. The failure cycle begins early and repeats, year after year until these students realize that school has nothing to offer them. By junior high/ middle school these students have become resistant to learning. They dare us to try, and the mantra begins. “How can we teach students who are resistant to learning?”

It is never too late to break this cycle! Success can do just that! We cannot give up but we need to channel our energies into focusing on what motivates students – interest and emotion. Deep down these students crave success and recognition.

David Perkins’ and Lauren Resnick’s combined research emphasizes how effort makes a difference for at-risk students – 25% of achievement is directly attributable to IQ, 25% of achievement is directly attributable to the opportunities and experiences students have as they learn, and 50% of achievement is directly attributable to students’ self-efficacy and self-esteem. To utilize this research, teachers can address the root cause of learning difficulty for many students – the lack of prior knowledge, vocabulary and experiences that are necessary to connect to new knowledge and skills. Integrating the acceleration practices of previewing up-coming concepts, vocabulary and/or skills and providing a foundation or scaffold for new learning by building lacking background knowledge 2 to 3 days before the main lesson, prepares at-risk learners to successfully participate during the lesson.

These students also benefit from breaking tasks into smaller, manageable steps, by previewing examples of authentic student work, from extensive teacher modeling, by partially completed graphic organizers, and word banks during note-taking and by using framed paragraphs.

 

Tips for Accelerating Learning in Your Classroom:

 1. Preview Key Vocabulary with the 4 Box Word Analysis using the following steps:

  • Introduce the word and have students repeat it out loud before they record it in the ‘Word’ column.

  • Provide the meaning of the word using elaboration and have students record it in the ‘Meaning’ column.

  • In collaborative pairs, have students rehearse by paraphrasing the meaning of the word in their own words before recording their response in the ‘In My Words’ column.

  • Model examples of a memory device, and have students create a way for them to remember the word using a picture, symbol or personal connection to the word.

 

 

 

(Note: Students can create this model in their notebooks by folding their paper to create the columns.)

2.  Preview Concepts with the Frayer Model for concept attainment using the following steps:

  • Introduce the examples and non-examples for a concept, i.e. invertebrates, dictatorship, symmetry, idioms, etc.

  • In collaborative pairs, ask students to examine the examples and non-examples to determine the characteristics of the concept and list them in the 'Characteristics' quadrant of the graphic organizer.

  • Confirm correct responses during whole group share.

  • Provide a student friendly definition or description with elaboration.

 

3.  Build background knowledge with completed graphic organizers that are previewed during background video snippets or trade books. Another excellent example is using trade books to build background experience and understanding such as the book, Zoom,  by Estvan Banyia, to introduce how perceptions are formed. Virtual experiences can be found on many topics using the Internet without leaving the classroom. Today, technology affoeds teachers with multiple oportunities to build background knowledge using the touch of a key. Chekc out the 1950s on UTube. What you will find are pictures with narration that explore that cultural period in the United States. It is exciting, and the topics are without limits.


4.  Use the Auto Summarizing tool that can be found in Word to condense long passages, highlight key information or create a summary of a passage for those students who have limited reading skills. There are publishers that offer this option for their content texts!

5. Teach students how to chunk long passages using distributed summarizing. Use Numbered-Heads! Ones are the readers and twos are the summarizers or they create a question that is answered by the chunk of content read. No popcorn reading! I learned at an early age that if I had a stutter, teachers never called on me to read aloud. Students will do just about anything to avoid looking ignorant in front of their peers. Anxiety can cause diarrhea.

6. Provide Framed Paragraphs for written responses. It does not matter what subject you are teaching. Begin with creating an average response indicating your expectations and then white out the key information in the response. Examples: 'The important information in this passage is... But the most important information was...,' 'To solve this problem, I first eliminate extraneios information, such as..., then using the critical information in the problem, _____ and _____, I identified the operation, _____, to solve this problem.' 'The main idea of this passage is _____ because _____, _____ and _____.' All you need to do is to create the basic response you would expect for your grade level. There is no reason to reduce the rigor of the expected response when you create this scaffold.

7. Differentiating assignments is another technique to engage those who need to be challenged and those who need additional support to meet the rigor of the expectations. Tiered assignments are delicious and easy to create because you begin with a typical assignment and then create ways to make it more challenging for those students who need it and also to build in additional supports for those students who would be unable to complete the assignment on their own. Example:

How do we move people and goods from place to place?

The labels for the groups of words on the transportation word wall fell down. Match the label with each set of words. Try to find some sets of words that could have more than one label.

The words on the transportation word wall fell down. Decide how to display the words so that they are grouped in a logical way that will help us as we answer our Essential Question. Be sure to create a label that describes each category of words.

Brainstorm a list of all the words you can think of related to transportation. Decide how to classify the words into meaningful groups that will help us as we answer the Essential Question. Classify the words in one way and then come up with other ways. Create labels for each grouping.

 

The operative word is K.I.S.S. = Keep It Simple Sweetheart. If it becomes complicated, it simply will not happen. Think outside of the box!

R.A.F.T. is another differentiating technique that affords student choice. (R = role, A = audience, F = format, T = topic)

Example:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are unlimited ways to meet the needs and abilities of our students! There is no excuse for apathy! It begins and ends with us – the educators! For more ideas, visit Differentiated Assignments, Catching Kids Up With Acceleration and Scaffolding Grade Level Learning.