4. Reconsider when to puzzle students
“Every fact or demonstration that would puzzle students before they have the right background knowledge has the potential to be an experience that will puzzle students momentarily, and then led to the pleasure of problem solving.
For example, if you conduct the hard boiled egg in the bottle experiment (go here if you are unfamiliar with it), and your students don’t have any background knowledge that explains how the egg gets sucked into the bottle, it comes across as a is a very cool magic trick. However, if they already know about air pressure and vacuums, then perhaps the pleasure they gain from watching the relevant scientific principles in action will lead to the further seeking of pleasure through solving similar problems. According to Willingham the students will want to do more. They will stay engaged.
5. Accept and act on variation in student preparation
This idea is controversial. Willingham argues that students will not come to class equally prepared to excel, due to different preparations and different levels of support at home.
He continues, “If that’s true, and if what I have said in this chapter is true, it is self defeating to give all of your students the same work. The less capable students will find it too difficult and will struggle against their brain’s bias to mentally walk away from schoolwork. To the extent you can, it’s smart, I think, to assign work to individuals or groups of students that is appropriate to their current level of competence.”
Willingham argues that if teachers don’t do this, the work they give to the less capable students will not help them catch up, and, in fact, will make them fall further behind. I think most schools try to solve this problem through class sectioning or, as in the case of AP classes, by setting prerequisites.
But some classes will still have students with a wide range of capabilities, presenting real challenges for the students and the teacher. How do you keep the top students interested and devote enough time to help the weaker students? Because the top students are most engaged in the lesson, they usually get most of the teacher’s attention. Plus a certain amount of information and material must be covered by the end of the year, putting pressure on the teacher to keep the lessons moving at a certain pace, which in turn puts pressure on the students to keep pace.
It’s difficult to attend to every student’s needs in these situations. I have experienced this very thing in the band.
When it came time to prepare the band for the World Championships, I would often have to break the pipe section into two groups. No matter how good the strong players would be, the weak players would pull down the general playing level of the band. By creating a “premier” group out of the A band, I could focus on refining the better players while helping the weaker ones catch up. If I didn’t do this, I would find myself spending too much time with one group at the expense of the other. I would split my time between the two groups, often having my top piper work with one group while I was with the other. Also, I would often have my stronger players work with the weaker ones during a portion of band practice. I created sub sections within the A band for the purpose of bringing everyone up to my expected standards.
Would this not be possible in a classroom of students with differing capabilities?
For example, the typical class routine goes like this: the teacher presents new material, answers clarifying questions, and assigns the homework. It’s up to each student to study, do the homework and gain the mastery of the new material. Then the students take tests that determine their mastery of the new material. For those who do not perform well, i.e. demonstrate mastery, and if they ask how they can improve for the next test, they usually hear “work harder”, “do your homework”, “ask more questions in class” and/or “get a tutor.” But could we do more to help the struggling student before it gets to this point?
What if weaker students were paired with stronger ones during class? The stronger students could be a positive influence on the weaker student. The weaker student could learn from the note taking skills of the stronger one. If there was time in class, the two could work together on homework.
Teachers also could build common purpose within the class by presenting incentives for achieving a particular class-wide GPA each marking period. Is it possible to get a class thinking of grades from a group perspective rather than an individual one? Maybe encouraging academic competitions would help.
I am very interested in finding ways to help our struggling students. In this chapter Willingham has shown us the importance of background information and working memory to a student’s desire to learn. In many cases, telling a student to work harder might not be the right answer, especially if the student does not have the tools (background information and working memory) he needs.
Here are our dilemmas: How do we discern whether poor performance is due to insufficient background information and working memory or just plain lack of effort? And how can we track a student’s specific deficiencies that will allow us to know where they will need extra help from year to year.
It saddens me to hear an upper school student say she finally learned fractions while taking a remedial summer algebra I course. Someone should have caught and remediated this a long time ago.
Any thoughts?
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