Keeping It Going

Keep the momentum going in your classroom. As energy wanes and spring fever begins to distract students from schoolwork, the effective teacher knows it is time to incorporate some strategies that keep students engaged.

This week's tips focus on the little things that a teacher can do to encourage and assist students. Motivation theorists claim that a number of small, ongoing rewards are often more effective than one larger payoff at the end. With final grades still far away, you might consider using some of the following tips in your classroom.

Process Steps

One of the ways students lose direction is that teachers assume that students know the steps they should be following. Incorporating these steps into your lessons deliberately gives students guidelines they can more readily follow.

Start at the Real Beginning. Most academic work begins with a messy stage like finding an idea or generating some questions. Create some class time to help students through this step.

Pick a Process. Develop a process that students can follow to understand and use the course information. Share it with students and use it to organize their efforts. Some models of academic processes are general, others discipline specific. In either case, a teacher who breaks the process into steps gives students a clear guide for working throughout the semester.

Building Assignments. Use homework assignments to help students build toward the final essay or exam. Homework responses can be study sheets for the final exam if the questions are taken from the same pool. Small writing assignments could be drafts that piece together into a larger written project.

Study Steps. There are some excellent guidelines to help students organize information in ways that make for more effective studying. (Ask the CIRT for a good chapter on this.) Take some time to teach and to reflect on these kinds of study skills.

Reflections

Interrupt the continual stream of new information with some deliberate moments of reflection. It is at these points that students can assess their progress and gauge what their next step will be.

Check Up. Ask your students to submit a quick statement explaining how they are doing on the semester project. They might list any concerns they have or tell you what is holding them up. Respond to this information in the next class.

Discuss Assignments. Make some time in class for students to discuss questions about their project in small teams. Allow the teams to raise any questions or concerns.

Peer Editing. Have students bring in a draft of an assignment and share among peers. Give students the evaluation guidelines to use when responding to their peers' work.

Quality Questions. Take a tip from the total quality process, ask your students what improvements they could make in conducting their studies.

Informative Feedback. Give students feedback that helps them understand the process they are involved in. Grades just indicate quality. Students need to know what steps they did well and what ones they had problems with. Use your comments to show them how to improve how they do the assignment.

Create Support

Don't forget to find brief moments to recognize and celebrate real accomplishments. These social rewards generate invaluable personal motivation.

Start Successfully. Without question the initial responses experienced by students shape their subsequent involvement. Find some way to praise and reward early efforts.  Design the first assignment or two on a project so that students who try will perform well.

Attaways. Create occasions to honor student work during the semester. Have weekly Oscar awards for certain categories. Include as many students as possible.

Sam's Celebration. Invite your class to Sam's Club in HMSU to celebrate the work of the whole class. A pizza party is a good reward for high grades on an exam.

Final Comments

Students can become overwhelmed or lost when the guidance and feedback from teachers is always posed in large-scale terms. To keep students continually engaged in their work, coach them along the steps of a process, then offer them feedback and support as they accomplish each step.

This Teaching Tip was first published by Indiana State University’s, Center for Teaching and Learning on March 31, 1998