Students in the 4th grade RIT group chose the category for the words that are classified as onomatopoeia.

They used these response cards to identify the category for the words in onomatopoeia.

How Do I Motivate Students Who Don’t Care?

from Motivating Students Who Don’t Care, by Allen  N. Mendler, p. 7:

“Being successful at motivating difficult youth requires that our behavior be motivated by the following basic beliefs:

1. All students are capable of learning when they have the academic and personal tools to be successful.

2. Students are inherently motivated to learn but learn to be unmotivated when they repeatedly fail.

3. Learning requires risk taking, so classrooms need to be safe places physically and psychologically.

4. All students have basic needs to belong, to be competent, and to influence what happens to them. Motivation to learn most often occurs when these basic needs are met.

5. High self-esteem should not be a goal, but rather a result that comes with the mastery of challenging tasks.

6. High motivation for learning in school most often occurs when adults treat students with respect and dignity.”

A group of 5th graders and I played games with cards where I have a 9 card always on the table. Whatever card I draw, I add to the 9 card. “You can easily make the 9 a 10″, I explained, “by covering one of the symbols on the other card. Then it’s easy to add 10 plus anything!”

Some blank looks told me I needed to start at the very, very beginning. There was great progress today. Lights came on. Each pair used 10 red-face cards and 10 black-face cards in their deck. They mixed them all up, drew ten cards each, then counted the number of red and the number of black and made an addition equation out of it. Each pair did this ten times. Here’s what I heard:

“Mrs. Hall, look! It did it again!” (Their partner had the same equation with the addends reversed in order.) “Do you know the trick, Mrs. Hall?”

What each student learned today was the reason for that phenomena and a concrete example of the commutative property. (”Oh, yeah!” they commented)

We then did a tally of how many of each equation students drew. 4+6, 6+4, 3+7, 7+3 were each drawn ten times. The equation that was drawn the least was 8+2 (2+8).

Kids are motivated to learn when they are taught at their functional level. And that is proficient for them for now.

http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=0bb62d5ffb626a9a3b79

This is my grandson’s K-5 class at Augusta Circle Elementary School.

Parents came to watch their children present.Juan shares his project with his class.

Students in Mr. Willingham’s class practice the Industrial Revolution Dance

Alejandro’s timeline of Benjamin Franklin’s life

Every student in Ms. Hennesseey’s class is on task and engaged. Not with her, or with me, but with educational computer games. Becki’s not here today, so I’m watching the class for Ms. Hennessey so she can print copies for class today.

There may be something to the whole interaction with media thing. Or could it be that kids will do the work if they think they can be successful and if they see the point to it? Maybe a little of both….

How do you help a student in 4th or 5th grade who doesn’t understand the concept of combining and separating as it relates to the basic operations? Here are things we are trying:

Marilyn Burns concept development lessons

Math Games using dice and playing cards

Re-grouping (trading) with base ten blocks

Re=prefix

Structure=base word

Re=do again

Structure= organization

So, we re-organize ourselves with the goal of improved student achievement. Read More…

Some pics of Miss Short’s students in the computer lab the day I supervised them. Mrs. Culbertson was out that day, so I stayed in there with the students so the teacher could get some preparation for her lessons finished. I am NOT saying I followed all the rules of the computer lab, not knowing what they are, but nobody did anything evil.

Students in Miss Tollick’s fifth grade class learned to summarize a page from their social studies text. They were taught to find two-three consecutive words in a paragraph that captured main points from the reading and write 5-6 of those down on post-it notes. The class divided into two groups, and I worked with one group and the teacher with the other. Students discussed their ideas and eliminated those that did not contribute to the main ideas of the page, then wrote their summaries from the resulting phrases.