MOTIVATING DISENGAGED AND RELUCTANT STUDENTS LEARNERS USING BRAIN

MOTIVATING DISENGAGED AND RELUCTANT STUDENTS (LEARNERS) USING BRAIN BASED STRATEGIES Ernest H. Johnson, Ph. D.

DISENGAGED: The action or process of withdrawing (emotionally or physically) from involvement in an activity, situation, or group. RELUCTANT LEARNERS: They avoid challenges, don’t complete tasks, and are satisfied to “just get by. ” They have the potential to excel but don’t seem to care about achieving in school. How to motivate Disengaged and Reluctant Learners? – Maybe the better question is how can teachers create the conditions for students to discover ways to motivate themselves?

STRATEGY 1. ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL! -DEVELOP YOUR OWN TOOLKIT! http: //nclmsliteracyhub. pbworks. com/ • North Carolina Literacy Network Tool. Kit

STRATEGY 2: PLACE THE SPOTLIGHT ON YOUR STUDENTS – CREATING A HOMECOURT ADVANTAGE IN YOUR CLASSROOM Spotlighting is a process for knowing anything you want to know about your students. • If you want to know how to motivate them, then have each student to write down 15 or more ways to motivate them. • Have the students walk around and share one of their ideas with each student in the classroom (the student writes down the name of the student and the idea that was shared). • Then, ask students one at a time to take the spotlight seat, and have each student they shared an idea with to

SPOTLIGHT – ACTIVITY Make a list of at least 3 ways you minimize disengagement in the classroom. ((Have a compelling talk)) The action or process of withdrawing (emotionally or physically) from involvement in an activity, situation, or group.

STRATEGY 3: PLACE THE SPOTLIGHT ON YOUR STYLE AND JBOPPP’S Judgements, Beliefs, Opinions, Positions, Perceptions, Prejudices • Automatic • Unconscious • Habits We are often Prisoners of our own Intellect! Moving from Teacher Centered to Student Centered Learning

YOUR STYLE: HOW CONSCIOUS ARE YOU OF YOUR STYLE? Questions • How would you describe your Style? • Has your Style hindered your relationships with some students? • Is it important for teachers to know their Style? • What professional development and/or training have you had on Styles?

YOU GOT TO KNOW YOUR STYLE TO MOTIVATE EVERY CHILD Activity: Partner Share – Describe Your Style GO TO: Slide Show

YOU GOT TO KNOW YOUR STYLE TO MOTIVATE EVERY CHILD Select One of the Sets of WORDS That Best Describes You Set 1: Objective, careful with details, practical, ordered, persistent Set 2: Analytical, rational, idea proof, research minded, logical Set 3: Spontaneous, people oriented, sensitive, aware, colorful Set 4: Risk taker, creative, practical dreamer, trouble-

STRATEGY 4: QUICK WRITES Throw out a question and ask students to quickly brainstorm on paper as many answers as they can. • Then 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 puts reluctant learners in the hot seat. In this case, you will set your 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

STRATEGY 4: QUICK WRITES • Write down everything you learned about Styles. • What is your #1 walk away fact about Styles.

STRATEGY 4: QUICK WRITES Throw out a question and ask students to quickly brainstorm on paper as many answers as they can. QUESTION What can a teacher do to set the conditions so that a students can discover their own sources of self motivation?

STRATEGY 5: DON'T BE BORING In an engaging classroom, you have a set of procedures and routines, but they don’t have to be boring. For example, 1. Have students come in and look at a list of adjectives on the board, many of which stretch your students’ vocabularies. 2. Then, ask students to greet two other students and use one of the adjectives to describe how they are feeling today. 3. The activity gets them up, moving and ready to learn, plus they’ve used a new vocabulary word in

STRATEGY 6: VOTE • Activate students’ brains with a quick round of voting. • Place 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 ((They are related to your lesson)) • The reluctant learners get to look around the room and see who else thinks just like them. • This quick activity helps create curiosity among

STRATEGY 7: SET GOALS Begin with the end in mind! This is one of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People in the famous Stephen Covey 's bestseller. In its most basic form, it refers to always having the image of the end of a task as your frame of reference to evaluate everything else.

STRATEGY 7: SET GOALS 1. A great practice for both teacher and students to set personal learning goals every day that are achievable, believable and measurable. 2. Part of reaching that goal is publicizing that goal. 3. Making goal-setting a regular and visible part of one's teaching practice models it for students, BUT… 4. It’s very important to leave time at the end of the day for students to revisit the goal they set. 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. 5. 101 (or 30) Rich Ideas – Journal about one of these

STRATEGY 7: SET GOALS Fuzzy Targets Don’t Get Hit – Use Some Clarity Tool To Choose Your Goals! 1) Current Status – Why do you want to improve your work with disengaged and resultant learners 2) If you could look back over a year from now with that year being your best year for motivating disengaged and reluctant learner,

STRATEGY 7: SET GOALS Fuzzy Targets Don’t Get Hit – Use Some Clarity Tool To Choose Your Goals I know I’ve been successful when… (You have 11 second to express yourself using your top 4)

STRATEGY 7: SET GOALS Spotlighting Activity 1. In team sports, the term home advantage – also called home court advantage – describes the benefit that the home team is said to gain over the visiting team. 2. This benefit has been attributed to psychological effects supporting fans have on the competitors; to psychological or physiological advantages of playing near home in familiar situations; to the disadvantages away teams suffer from changing time zones or climates, or from the rigors of travel; and to specific rules that favor the home team. 3. Spotlighting is all about building a "Home Court Advantage" within your classroom -- where everyone feels involved, appreciated, and part of the Team!

STRATEGY 8: FORM GROUPS • Get comfortable constantly asking students to break into groups to share with one another, brainstorm or collaborate, and always sets a time limit for the conversation, like 77 seconds. • Use bizarre time limits (77 seonds) and your students will think you are actually watching the clock and they will get to work quicker. • This practice will promote more time on task than a generic five-minute time limit, which students know is just as likely to stretch into eight minutes.

STRATEGY 9: FOCUS ON THE ABCS ACCEPTANCE, BELONGING AND COMMUNITY • Without this set of ABCs, traditional ABCs will not be as successful. • Without any doubt, there is a rush to cover content in many schools and classrooms, but 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.

STRATEGY 10: CONTINUALLY CHANGE THE “STATE” OF THE CLASSROOM • These are changes in who is providing the information, who is doing the talking, and the format information is provided. • For every 10 to 12 minutes of content, teachers need to give students two minutes of “chew time. ”

STRATEGY 11: EMPATHIZE Keep in mind the students’ perspective and listen when they explain what they need to learn. Take Ned’s Great Eight to Heart: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. I feel OK, my basic needs are met It matters and its relevant It’s active – physically, cognitively, and emotionally It stretches me, but I feel that I can learn it I have a coach I have to use it to better understand it I have to think back on it, reflect, meta-cognitive process I plan my next steps https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=p_Bskc. XTqp. M#action=share

STRATEGY 12: DO A BRAIN CHECKLIST • Build a safe environment for everyone • Recognize diversity in my classroom • Assessment must be formative, authentic and ongoing • Instructional strategies should be a palette of opportunities • New models It’s IMPORTANT for you to be growing and open to new ideas and adventures. Each day you walk into the classroom, you never know what you’re going to get – CANI!

STRATEGY 13 -1: SIMPLIFY AND REFLECT Frame every lesson in a similar format but executing it differently each time. 1. First activate the learners by making them curious and developing a need-to-know. 2. Then, let them dig into the content in an exploratory phase that takes them deeply into rich content. 3. Last, help scaffold students’ broader understanding by helping them integrate it with what they already know.

STRATEGY 13 -2: SIMPLIFY Some metacognitive questions that can get them thinking this way include: 1. What part of the lesson did you like the best? 2. What part of the lesson was the most difficult for you? 3. What part of the lesson can you use to better your life? 4. Why part of the lesson is related to something you always know?

STRATEGY 13 -3: SIMPLIFY AND REFLECT If you don’t give students time to reflect, to connect, to marinate on the information, they’re going to regurgitate what’s right there in front of them without even thinking. Reflection and rehearsal of what was learned is crucial to move information from working memory into long-term memory. If you had to use just one of the Reflection Questions other than #1, which one would you

STRATEGY 14: CHUNK INFORMATION 1. Make information more easily digestible for students by being more purposeful in our delivery of information. Too often teachers deliver an entire lesson without letting students move or discuss once. 2. Students will give up if they are overloaded with facts, and chunking provides a way to pause and let students think over what they’ve learned. Breaks to assimilate information are crucial for mastery. 3. Lesson mastery means students have mastered

STRATEGY 15: PROPS Keep a box of props for when you are teaching. Throws something to a student when it’s their turn to talk so they have something to focus on. This works well for kids with attention problems, as well as for the tactile learners.

STRATEGY 16: BREAKS • Short video clips can be a great brain break. • A great clip can be interpreted in multiple ways. • You can use these breaks to foster divergent thinking.

STRATEGY 17: POST-ITS Post-It note discussions are a good way to get all students involved without making anyone uncomfortable by putting them on the spot. Ask an open-ended question. It could be an activator at the beginning, a marinator in the middle, or even a summarizer to test for understanding at the end of a lesson. Students jot down their answers to the prompt on Post-Its. English Language learners or special needs students could write just one word or draw something. Then students share in pairs. Even the most reticent learner is OK sharing one-on-one. Post all the responses on a

STRATEGY 18: MAKE SNOWBALLS The Snowball brain break is a great way to summarize learning at the end of a lesson (and should be done when students are on their way to recess or at the end of the day). Students write answers to a prompt on a piece of paper. On the count of three, they throw their “snowball” randomly up and away (but not at anyone). Then everyone grabs a snowball that landed near them. It’s a way you can purposefully pause, have them reflect and make connections. You can Snowballs in all subjects, sometimes asking students to write three new vocabulary words they learned, or three successes they had in that lesson, or three questions. Students love it and it’s

STRATEGY 19: GUESSING GAMES When slightly boring content must be covered, create a need-to-know in students by having them predict the answers. Students are more likely to be invested in the answers when they are revealed after students themselves have had a chance to debate and predict. This strategy is meant to get students to manipulate and think about the information themselves. If the teacher does all the interacting with the material, the teacher’s brain, not the students’ brains, will grow. That’s why you (teachers) need a large toolkit of approaches for getting students thinking, speaking, writing, touching, building, listening and, most

STRATEGY 20: DON’T OVERLOOK ADVERSE CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES (ACE’S) An ACE score is a tally of different types of abuse, neglect, and other hallmarks of a rough and traumatic childhood. According to the Adverse Childhood Experiences study, the rougher your childhood, the higher your score is likely to be, and the higher your risk for later health problems.

STRATEGY 20: DON’T OVERLOOK ADVERSE CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES

STRATEGY 21 -1: BALANCED INQUIRY • Lectures have a time and a place, but they are far more effective when they are interactive. Try Harvey Silver’s guide for an effective lecture: connect new knowledge to existing knowledge, organize the materials into chunks, dual code the information so it’s stored in multiple places and exercise the brain. • It’s a matter of balance to keep the engagement alive. I don’t’ advocate that teachers always have students teach one another just because it has a high retention and transfer rate; doing all of one thing is never effective. Instead, it’s about a balanced use of all the inquiry approaches.

STRATEGY 21 -2: BALANCED INQUIRY The Interactive Lecture engages students and helps them build strong permanent memories by leading them through the following four-phase learning process: 1. Connect: The lecture begins with a hook that helps students connect their experiences and background knowledge to the lecture topic. 2. Organize: The lecturer presents information in manageable "chunks, " which students record on visual organizers. 3. Dual-Code: The lecturer uses a variety of presentation techniques to make content more memorable.

STRATEGY 22: MIND-STREAMING Mind-streaming is another fun brain break activity that also gives students a chance to recall what they’ve learned and teach one another. • Have students randomly pair up and then each person teaches the other the most important things they’ve learned in that lesson. (Pair Up and Teach One Concept You Learned Today) • Each person will remember different things, and when there is overlap that will reinforce the concept. • It’s simple, effective and doesn’t require any teacher preparation because students are teaching one another.

STRATEGY 23: BE INTERACTIVE • Always try to make tasks engaging and interactive by giving students enough knowledge, giving them the language to express it, giving them an authentic reason for the interaction they’re engaged in, prime them with interesting questions, establish a community of learners that support each other, and give students a clear understanding of the task. • If these elements are part of every class, all

STRATEGY 24: HOPE Have Only Positive Expectations

STRATEGY 25: EVERY CHILD NEEDS A CHAMPION

EVERY CHILD NEEDS A CHAMPION • https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=SFn. MTHh. Kdkw