# data[].attributes.headline
Interesting facts about the male brain and how it works!

# data[].attributes.subject
Interesting facts about the male brain and how it works!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
If you have a son who struggles at school, it may be worth evaluating his learning environment. As this teacher has seen, some little changes can make a big difference.

Over the years I've taught many kids who struggled in the classroom environment, but one boy sticks out. Derek (not his real name) was in my Year 6 class. He was a bright boy, but was unaccountably lagging two years behind in numeracy and literacy scores. At the beginning of that school year, Derek's previous teacher sought me out to give me the run down on all his failures from the year before. Things like not paying attention, distracting other students and playing up during quiet work time. It was a sorry tale! However, I thought it said more about the teacher's struggle in creating an environment where boys could thrive, not Derek's individual learning and behavioural problems.

When we think of making learning more accessible to boys, here are some of the questions we ask:

1. Are 'boy-friendly' classrooms possible?

2. What does a 'boy-friendly' classroom look like?

3. If we help boys in this way, will we hinder girls?

4. Can one classroom cater for all students or is this just wishful thinking?

Many teachers are finding ways of engaging boys. They know that they are onto something, because if teachers engage the boys in a co-ed classroom then they will likely create an environment where all can learn, girls included.

So what really engaged Derek in my Year 6 classroom?

In the first months I intentionally created an environment with lots of physical activity. As a rule, I changed the learning activities every 20 minutes, and traditional bookwork tasks were 'sandwiched' between other active learning tasks.

In Term 2 we began a four-week entrepreneurial learning activity. In the simulation 'marketplace' the children worked in teams to create businesses by providing goods or services. This created a new classroom economy, which required governance, collaboration and evaluation. This was the moment that the Derek woke up from his 'schooling daze'. He and his classmates were swept up into this exciting real-world experience.

In a 'land' auction at the beginning of the learning experience where classroom spaces were allocated to students, Derek decided to bid for multiple properties while other children waited for the premium sites to become available. He ended up with 10 or more of the properties, bought at a fraction of their value. He created a business leasing them to others. Derek saw an opportunity and seized it, showing business sense well beyond his years. He decided to develop a spreadsheet to track all the money he was earning from his properties. Then he began to see other opportunities in leasing furniture, lobbying government and providing cleaning services. He employed more staff. As he encountered a new problem, he found a way to find a solution.

Throughout the entire experience Derek was engaged and motivated. Unsurprisingly, he excelled during the bookwork-based assignment at the end of the unit of study. The assessment involved each student choosing their preferred mode of response from a list of activities, based on a rubric of Bloom's Taxonomy and Multiple intelligences. In just four short weeks, Derek underwent an extraordinary transformation!

What was it about this learning environment that stimulated Derek? They are strategies that teachers have instinctively known but not always implemented. Here is an overview of the current thinking on boys and education.

Boys require more physical activity.

They generally have more energy to burn, so teachers need to harness this positively. Boys generally love exercise early in the day and sporadically throughout to 'wake up their brain'. In a boy-friendly class, the style of learning activities will change regularly so they can remain more engaged.

Boys typically lag behind 1-2 years in literacy skills, so this needs to be managed very carefully.

Lagging in literacy can put many boys in a very frustrating and tenuous position. They can feel they are never really comfortable in the classroom because everything revolves around reading, the very thing they struggle most with. An obvious coping mechanism is for boys to muck up when they are out of their depth. A boy friendly classroom will make learning to read and write purposeful and real. It will uphold the dignity of these children. A variety of text types preferred by boys and spatial and visual learning methods need to be used.

Boys need more 'hands on' tasks rather than communicative tasks.

Teachers need to pay attention to certain learning methods so boys have the same opportunity to learn as girls, in ways matching their preferences. Experiential learning activities tend to be more active in nature and therefore engage boys more holistically and effectively. However, the reality is that this style of activity take more time to prepare and is more 'risky' than simple bookwork. For this reason passive and safe learning techniques tend to dominate the classroom. Girls and boys enjoy experiential learning and learn richly and deeply from these tasks.

Boys prefer a cooler classroom.

One reason for this is that research tells us that boys prefer to work at 21°C while girls work best at 24°C. This is why boys work better earlier in the day. A classroom suitable for boys and girls will be set at 22.5°C.

Boys are stimulated more by challenge and risk.

This is because the autonomic nervous system of boys and girls reacts differently to threat and stress. Girls can find challenge and risk stressful, whereas boys thrive on this.

The teacher of a boy-friendly classroom will use challenge and risk as a motivator for learning. It's a shame that many schools in this current generation have become sterile and predictable to accommodate health and safety litigation fears. However, children can learn powerful lessons by taking appropriate risks and learning from their mistakes, as this school in New Zealand shows.

Boys need extra help to manage their time.

Homework, assignments, timetables and self-discipline can be problematic for boys because the executive function of their brain is less developed in the earlier school years. A teacher who gives specific instruction and mentoring around time management will see a huge improvement in their male students' ability to organize themselves. Boys will learn time-management skills when the process is clear, positive and relational, rather than punitive and strict.

A learning environment that caters for boys is possible, it just requires greater awareness and skill by the teacher. For many teachers, a disengaged boy is far more than a puzzle, they make us feel ineffective and out of control. At times we can even resent them for disrupting the learning of others. Our education system must continually help teachers to up-skill and develop sophisticated and nuanced teaching tools to create classrooms a friendly place for both boys and girls.
Please note: The differences between boys and girls is statistically significant, however individual differences of children will always mean that some children do not follow these trends.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How your disruptive boy can thrive in the classroom

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
If you have a son who struggles at school, it may be worth evaluating his learning environment. As this teacher has seen, some little changes can make a big difference. Over the years I've taught many kids who struggled in the classroom environment, but one boy sticks out.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
September 2006 | Volume 64 | Number 1
Teaching to Student Strengths Pages 56-61

Kelley King and Michael Gurian

Boys who don't read or write as well as we'd like come in all kinds. There's Garrett, who's perpetually in motion, his fingers drumming the desk. He's not focusing on his reading and pokes the student in front of him. He's becoming a discipline problem. There's Jared, who stares into space, failing to fill more than a few short lines with words. There's Dan, who turns in rushed and sloppy work and receives failing grades. When it comes to fulfilling the kinds of assignments that we call "literacy," boys are often out of their chairs rather than in them.

At Douglass Elementary School, in Boulder, Colorado, a significant literacy gap existed among the 470 students. On the 2005 Colorado State Assessment Program (CSAP), boys attending Douglass underperformed the girls in grades 3-5 (the boys' scores ranged from 6-21 points lower, with a 13-point gap overall). Because boys represented at least half the student population at every grade level-and 75 percent of the special education population-it was clear that the gender gap had powerful implications for the school as a whole and for the futures of the students.

In looking closely at these statistics, the staff suspected that Douglass was not alone in facing classrooms full of boys who were not learning to read and write as well as the girls were. In fact, all over the world boys are struggling in school, with lower grades, more discipline problems, more learning disabilities, and more behavior disorders than girls (Gurian & Stevens, 2005). As experienced teachers of boys, as parents of sons, and as professionals charged with solving a specific and compelling problem, the educators at Douglass went to work. They discovered that recent brain research backed up many of their intuitions about gender and learning styles (see Gurian, Henley, & Trueman, 2001).

By introducing more boy-friendly teaching strategies in the classroom, the school was able to close the gender gap in just one year. At the same time, girls' reading and writing performance improved.

On the Colorado State Assessment Program, Douglass Elementary students experienced an overall net percentage gain of 21.9, which was the highest achievement gain of any school in the Boulder Valley School District. Moreover, Douglass reversed the typical trend of girls outperforming boys: The boys experienced a 24.4 percentage point gain in reading and writing; the girls a 19 percentage point gain, which constituted three times the gain of girls in other district elementary schools. Most remarkably, Douglass special education students achieved 7.5 times the average gain for this population of students in the district, coming in with a 50-point gain.

A Look into Boy-Friendly Classrooms

How did Douglass manage these successes? Using a theory developed by one of the authors (Gurian et al., 2001; Gurian & Stevens, 2005), the school analyzed the natural assets that both girls and boys bring to learning (see "The Brain: His and Hers," p. 59). Douglass realized that its classrooms were generally a better fit for the verbal-emotive, sit-still, take-notes, listen-carefully, multitasking girl. Teachers tended to view the natural assets that boys bring to learning-impulsivity, single-task focus, spatial-kinesthetic learning, and physical aggression-as problems. By altering strategies to accommodate these more typically male assets, Douglass helped its students succeed, as the following vignettes illustrate.

Increasing Experiential and Kinesthetic Learning Opportunities

Today's assignment in Mrs. Hill's 4th grade class is to arrange words and punctuation marks into a sentence that makes sense and is grammatically correct. Instead of relying on worksheets or the overhead, which might have bored students like Alexander, the teacher directs the students to arrange cards representing the sentence parts across the classroom floor. The task-oriented discussion and interaction, the physical movement, and the orientation in space access the boys' neurological strengths, keeping them energized and attentive. Alexander and his group are working hard to complete their grammatical challenge before the other groups do.

These male-friendly elements have also energized the girls. Many of them like a good debate, competition, and moving around.

Supporting Literacy Through Spatial-Visual Representations

Across the hall in Mrs. Johnston's 3rd grade classroom, the students are writing. Timothy has great ideas and is always trying to please, but at the beginning of the year, he had great difficulty writing even a single paragraph. Formulating his ideas into well-organized thoughts, coupled with sitting still and the fine-motor task of writing, often overwhelmed him. His mother testified to his frequent meltdowns at home.

Realizing the need for nonverbal planning tools, especially in males, to help bridge the gap between what students are thinking and what they're able to put down on paper, Mrs. Johnston now asks Timothy and his classmates to create storyboards, a series of pictures with or without words that graphically depict a story line. The pictures on the storyboard prompt the brain to remember relevant words, functioning for these learners as first-stage brainstorming. Now when Timothy writes, he describes what he has previously drawn and then adds to that foundation. His spatial-visual assets are helping him to write.

Letting Boys Choose Topics That Appeal to Them

Although parents and educators are quick to point out to students the more practical relevance of reading-you need to read to get through high school and college so you can get a job-this kind of reasoning works more readily for girls than for boys. Said one 6th grade boy, "The only reading that's a must is reading what's on the computer or in a football manual. There's no point to reading a book for pleasure."

Many teachers are familiar with this kind of response. Boys often seem to think that what they read in language arts class is irrelevant. Mrs. Vanee decided to innovate in this area. In her 2nd grade classroom, most of the boys read and write about such topics as NASCAR racing, atomic bombs, and football or about such situations as a parrot biting a dad through the lip. Many of the girls write about best friends, books, mermaids, and unicorns.

When asked why he thought he was writing about superheroes whereas Brittany was writing about her best friend, 8-year-old Luke replied, "Because boys have more R-rated minds than girls do," with "R-rated" referring to a preference for aggression scenarios, competition, action, and superhero journeys. Brittany concurred as she rolled her eyes in a "Yes."

Although Mrs. Vanee is aware of the potential for excess here, she now understands how relevant this focus on action and heroism is to males, and she sees that letting boys write on these topics has improved their papers. It has also provided her with numerous opportunities to teach lessons on character, nonviolence, and civility. Moreover, giving students greater choice in what they read and write has improved writing among both boys and girls.

Helping Boys with Homework

One of the primary reasons that some boys get Ds and F s in school is their inattention to homework. This was true for 5th grader Todd, who generally did his homework in a shoddy way-or not at all.

Douglass teachers now request that parents sign homework assignments. Homework with no signature requires an explanation. This way, the school gets parents involved, encouraging them to supervise homework and cut out distractions that their children may be experiencing, such as TV and video games, until the homework is completed. This policy also keeps parents apprised of the quality of the homework that their child is turning in.

Todd's grades have improved since this policy was started. He's now getting Bs instead of Ds on his language arts assignments. His teacher, Mrs. Steposki, is especially vigilant, meeting with him regularly to see whether he's gotten his homework signed and supporting his parents in keeping him focused. Although Todd still doesn't enjoy a lot of his homework-much of it feels like busywork to him-he does feel pride in getting a B. "Things are better now," he says.

Offering Single-Gender Learning Environments

One of the innovations that teachers can use in targeted ways in coeducational classes is single-gender grouping. Mrs. Holsted has decided to divide her 2nd grade class today to give the students a choice in reading material. The girls choose several American Girls doll books; the boys choose Lynne Reid Banks's The Indian in the Cupboard (HarperTrophy, 1999).

Soon the girls are on the floor with a giant piece of chart paper and markers. They label each of three circles of a Venn diagram with the name of a female book character and then they write down adjectives to describe that character. Meanwhile, in the boys' group, Ryan and David are writing lines for a play about the novel they've chosen, happy to be able to act out the battle scene. A lot of what these students need to learn "sticks" because of this approach. Tomorrow, the students will return to their coed groupings, and some will note that they like being back together.

Making Reading and Writing Purposeful

Quite often, boys do their best work when teachers establish authentic purpose and meaningful, real-life connections. In his 4th grade classroom, Mr. Hoyt talks to 10-year-old Clayton about his narrative fiction piece. Clayton doesn't feel the need to do any more work on his D+ paper. When Mr. Hoyt asks who his audience is, Clayton replies, "Just the class and you." "What if you were reading this to someone else?" asks Mr. Hoyt. "Say, a high school basketball player you like?" Clayton ponders this. "Think about an older guy you respect," Mr. Hoyt suggests. "Write this for him to read." Clayton thinks of just the right person-his older brother-and starts the paper over again.

Garrett sits across the room. His real-life project is to draw to scale a map of the school and playground and then annotate it. From there, he'll develop a proposal for a new playground layout and present it to the school's landscape design architect and the playground revitalization committee.

Meanwhile, Greg is designing a Web site on which students can post their writing projects for others to read. In fact, to create a greater sense of the importance of writing, Mr. Hoyt suggested that Douglass Elementary start providing opportunities for all students to share their writing in front of large audiences-at monthly school assemblies, for example. Competition and the opportunity to earn public respect have helped motivate many undermotivated students-especially the boys.

Seeking Out Male Role Models

Douglass Elementary recognizes the special insight and impact of teachers like Mr. Hoyt, who serve as valuable role models for boys. The school actively encourages men to visit classrooms to share their own writing and speak about their favorite books. This is an area in which the school successfully partnered with parents. Several of the students' fathers write professionally as journalists, screenwriters, authors, or lyricists. Appealing to fathers to be role models for literacy has yielded many special guest speakers and several weekly "regulars" in the classroom.

Getting Serious About Gender Learning

There's nothing revolutionary about the strategies that we have suggested. Teachers have already used many of them in their classrooms, but perhaps they haven't used them in an organized and scientific way. Teacher training at Douglass, which focused on the gender learning work conducted by the Gurian Institute, connected brain science to classroom practice. Teachers learned that good science supported many of their personal observations about how boys and girls learn.

By incorporating new theories from gender science into classroom practice, teachers can close gender gaps and significantly improve learning. Douglass Elementary school provided the action research that proves just that. But to bring about these improvements, teachers need to ask themselves some key questions:

As teachers, do we fully understand the challenges that boys face in education today?

Do we realize that there is a scientific basis for innovating on behalf of both girls and boys as disaggregated groups?

Does my school incorporate boy-friendly and girl-friendly learning innovations in full knowledge of how essential they are in accommodating the structural and chemical gender differences built into the human brain?

Do the educators in my school realize that many behaviors typical of either boys or girls are neurologically based?

Although tackling these questions is challenging, acting on what we have learned can lead to rewards for everyone-for teachers, parents, communities, and especially our students.

Verbal/spatial differences. Boys' brains generally have more cortical areas dedicated to spatial-mechanical functioning than girls' brains do, whereas girls' brains generally have greater cortical emphasis on verbal-emotive processing (Blum, 1997). Girls use more words on average than boys do, and they tend to think more verbally.

P cells and M cells. The male visual system (optical and neural) relies more heavily on type M ganglion cells, which detect movement. Girls generally have more type P ganglion cells, which are sensitive to color variety and other fine sensory activity (Sax, 2005). As a result, boys tend to rely more on pictures and moving objects when they write, whereas girls tend to excel in using words that reference color and other fine sensory information.

Frontal lobe development. A girl's prefrontal cortex is generally more active than a boy's, and her frontal lobe generally develops at an earlier age (Rich, 2000). These are the decision-making areas of the brain (as well as the reading/writing/word production areas). These factors can lead to girls being less impulsive than boys are. Girls are usually better able to sit still and read, able to read and write earlier, and better at literacy in general. When teachers are unaware of these brain differences, they may misdiagnose normal boys as having learning disabilities and conduct disorders.

Neural rest states. Boys' brains go into what neurologists call a rest state many times each day. You'll notice this when you look at who's drifting off, zoning out, or sleeping through class. You'll also notice that some boys will try to avoid these rest states by engaging in such activities as tapping their pencils or hitting a classmate with a spitball. For some boys-especially those with behavioral issues-these self-stimulating and disruptive behaviors are symptomatic of emotional or psychological problems. But for many boys these disruptions simply reflect male brains trying to stay awake in a classroom that is not well suited for their kind of learning. Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) scans have enabled us to better understand the rest states of male and female brains (Gurian & Stevens, 2005). When the male's brain gets bored, some of his brain functioning shuts down. There is a drift into a brain state that negates learning and performance. When the female brain gets bored, however, more of her brain functioning stays active. Even when she's bored, a girl is more likely to retain the ability to take notes, write words down, and listen carefully.

Cross talk between hemispheres. Structural differences in girls' brains generate more cross talk between hemispheres, leading to better multitasking. Boys' brains, on the other hand, tend to lateralize and compartmentalize brain activity (Rich, 2000). Thus, girls tend to pay attention to more information on more subjects at any given time, whereas boys tend to heap a lot of information into a single-task focus. They concentrate best, in general, when they follow steps A to Z without distraction. Boys also take more time than girls to transition between tasks (Havers, 1995). They tend to become more irritable (and to underperform in learning and classroom behavior) when teachers move them continually between tasks. Multitasking is, of course, crucial to life performance, but boys are better served by balancing multitasking with project-driven and depth-driven learning.

Natural aggression. For a number of neural and chemical reasons, boys are more naturally aggressive and competitive than girls are (Gurian, 1996). Girls generally gravitate less toward competitive learning and relationships characterized by aggression nurturance (the hitting and playful "dissing" that boys continually engage in to support one another). The bonding chemical oxytocin greatly affects this male/female difference. With less oxytocin in the male neural and physiological system, boys tend toward greater impulsivity, more aggression, and less reliance on bonding malleability (Taylor, 2002). They have less desire than girls to comply to please others, including teachers.

-Kelley King and Michael Gurian

References

Blum, D. (1997). Sex on the brain: The biological differences between men and women. New York: Viking.

Havers, F. (1995, March 2). Rhyming tasks male and female brains differently. The Yale Herald.

Gurian, M. (1996). The wonder of boys. New York: Tarcher/Putnam.

Gurian, M., Henley, P., & Trueman, T. (2001). Boys and girls learn differently: A guide for teachers and parents. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Gurian, M., & Stevens, K. (2005). The minds of boys: Saving our sons from falling behind in school and life. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Rich, B. (Ed.). (2000). The Dana brain daybook. New York: The Charles A. Dana Foundation.

Sax, L. (2005). Why gender matters. New York: Doubleday.

Taylor, S. (2002). The tending instinct. New York: Times Books.

Kelley King is Principal of Douglass Elementary School in the Boulder Valley School District, Boulder, Colorado; kelley.king@bvsd.org. Michael Gurian is Cofounder of the Gurian Institute ( www.gurianinstitute.com), an organization that trains teachers and parents in gender science and promotes practical applications. He has written widely on the topic of gender differences.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Teaching to the Minds of Boys - Educational Leadership

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
September 2006 | Volume 64 | Number 1 Teaching to Student Strengths Pages 56-61 Kelley King and Michael Gurian Boys who don't read or write as well as we'd like come in all kinds. There's Garrett, who's perpetually in motion, his fingers drumming the desk.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
4 Creative Classroom Strategies That Curtail Behavior "Issues"

As the school year begins, teachers and parents align with the common goal of helping ALL kids be successful. Soon into the year, however, teachers may be frustrated, parents may be overwhelmed.

Having been on "both sides of the block," here's my message of hope to you, dear teachers and parents, including some boy-friendly strategies that may make everyone's lives a bit more sane, calm, and FUN!

As your school year begins, I know you're busy and likely overwhelmed with all of the lesson prep, classroom prep, meetings, and students. My hope is you'll recognize these as easy-to-implement strategies that will actually give you MORE time to teach and LESS time to spend on managing behavior - making yours a calmer, saner, and more FUN class for all! Have a great year. Love, Me.

Your teachers are busy, overwhelmed and excited as they prepare for your child. These simple tips may save them some time and will surely save your student some anxiety. Please share with your teacher in a diplomatic, helpful and kind way. Have a great year. Love, Me.

It is easiest to ride a horse in the direction it is already going. - Chinese Proverb

Your son is the "horse." When parents and teachers create school environments that support active learning they are helping his ride to become smoother than ever before!

Remember that whatever helps boys, helps many girls, too!
CLASSROOM STRATEGIES
1: BUSY HANDS Allow his hands to be occupied when he has to sit still and listen.

Try these:

Squeeze ball or other fidget

Origami

Doodling (Studies show doodling increases auditory comprehension by 29%.)

Pipe cleaners

2: BUSY BODIES Allow movement around the classroom during lessons. Too much sitting compresses the vertebrae, leading to fatigue and even more wiggles.

Try these:

Clipboards for doing work on the floor

Regular stretch breaks (Google brain breaks for tons of ideas)

Get out of seats to get supplies (rather than having everything in the desk)

Ankle rotations (Motor movement in the lower limbs activates the brain more quickly than arm movement.)

Foam Frisbees - give 30 second frisbee break and allow them to throw

Beach Ball toss - give 30 seconds to keep in the air as a team

3: CHANGE THE SPACE Simple classroom adaptations can contain wiggles and allow more comfortable learning for all students:

Try these:

Stretchy bands around legs of chairs for feet to swing and push against

One-legged stools to encourage balance and focus

Stand-up desks - as simple as a paper ream box

More physical space for boys (Girls are comfortable six to a table, boys do better with four.)

Outdoors! (It has been shown that natural light increases test scores.)

4: ADD TO YOUR LESSON Adding variations to your lessons will accommodate learning and active boys! Be sure to include competition - boys love it and its important that girls get comfortable with it, too.

Try these:

Stand up and read

Stand up when called upon

Rotate tasks from desk-to-desk or centers

"Swat the Spot" (with a flyswatter) swat the correct answer on the board; ideal for a math or spelling bee

Draw before writing

Adapt math word problems to allow high-boy-interest topics: two funny, two scary, two gross

Above all, boys love to laugh!

Make learning fun and active and you'll soon wonder where all your "behavior issues" have gone!
What we learn with pleasure, we never forget. - anon
These PODCAST BUNDLES give you access to hours of expert interviews on all-things-boys:

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Boy-Friendly Classroom Strategies - Boys Alive!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
4 Creative Classroom Strategies That Curtail Behavior "Issues" As the school year begins, teachers and parents align with the common goal of helping ALL kids be successful. Soon into the year, however, teachers may be frustrated, parents may be overwhelmed.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A few simple tweaks in the classroom can have a major impact in helping boys (and girls) discover their potential!
The education of boys is in crisis! From birth, boys are wired with higher energy levels, untiring curiosity, and a natural born spirit to compete and win. Although they have great potential, it's no surprise these qualities make it harder to engage and inspire them in the classroom.

These qualities can get in the way of learning in traditional classrooms. Maybe you already include "boy-friendly" teaching strategies in your classroom. If not, think about the impact if we all found ways to teach them in a way that makes most sense to them?

According to Neuroscientist Edmond Dixon, "Brain science has proven 'engagement and effort' are not just important, they are critical." These motivation elements are simply "human friendly." So, they are useful for teaching girls, too!

How Do We Motivate Boys to be Engaged and Give Effort?

In short, we must activate their emotional energy. When we make emotional connections to new learning, a whole new region of our brains are triggered! This region floods the brain with chemicals that provide energy. That energy is motivation - motivation to get engaged!

"Activating emotional energy" doesn't mean you have to do kart-wheels or stand on your head. (Although it often feels that way.) Just a few small and strategic adjustments can make a world of difference!

1. Tell them "why." Boys (and girls) need know the reason for learning something new. If they can connect the dots about why they need the new knowledge, they'll naturally be more motivated to learn! This connection supplies the extra "brain juice" required for motivation.
-

2. Incorporate some kind of challenge/game in the curriculum. This stimulates their cave man "hunting" instinct. Boys naturally love competition and winning, so the adrenaline rush that comes with reaching their goals motivates them to keep playing the "game" of learning.The next time you wrap up a unit, help your students prepare for the test with a Quiz Bowl. Make it easy on yourself by having the students create the questions. (Simply provide them with topics they need to cover.)
-

3. Add in action and play! Boys are simply hard-wired for it, they gravitate toward it. The more you tap into their natural energy supply, the more interest they will display for learning.Give them options to move around the room. Encourage "pairing" with a partner. (Just be sure to provide a mechanism for matching partners so no one is left out; that will cause the emotional energy to go in the completely opposite direction for the students left out.) Encourage students to create their own games with the content.
-

4. Inject humor! Boys have a tendency to revert to comedy and general messing around, no matter the situation. Why not add it to your bag of tricks for teaching curriculum? Humor activates the emotional region of their brain; it makes them comfortable. As a result, it will also reduce any anxiety he may have about school and in his ability to excel in that environment.You can make "humor" -and other emotionally engaging activities-a simple routine. See our popular article, Getting Students in the "Green Zone."

Motivating the Masses

In summary, a boy's aptitude and potential for success in school must be founded on engagement and effort. It's not that they lack intelligence or passion to succeed in school, it's how that intelligence and passion are activated that makes ALL the difference!

For SOAR ® proven ways you can help boys get ahead in school and life, click here.

EB 072517

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A few simple tweaks in the classroom can have a major impact in helping boys (and girls) discover their potential! The education of boys is in crisis! From birth, boys are wired with higher energy levels, untiring curiosity, and a natural born spirit to compete and win.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"I've been working on raising boys' achievement since 1993... you'd have thought I'd have got it sorted by now" is regularly the opening line to one of my INSET days or keynote speeches. It usually provokes mild amusement. "But sadly I'm afraid there aren't that many people working on it." And nobody laughs. Because it's true. Why is it? I always ask. Do people really think that by focusing on the boys the girls are going to suffer? I call that sloppy thinking.

I began working on strategies that hit all the right buttons for boys without disadvantaging girls in 1993 when I had already been teaching in Secondary Schools for fifteen years. 1993 was the first year of OFSTED and we were told: a) there was something wrong with the way we were delivering collective worship, b) there was a problem with the plumbing in the science labs and c) the girls were doing significantly better than the boys. Could we sort it out? So we set to.

What became extremely apparent was that leaving it until boys were in year 11 was definitely too late. By the time boys get to year six, as you will find in most primary schools in the land, there is a small group of boys, the peer police cadets, who are dragging boys off cliffs. If we don't act sooner by the time these boys reach year 10 they can be virtually running the place, telling, as they do, other boys whether its ok to work, to write, to dance, to sing, to care, to read, to share - virtually anything.

So we began to work with our partner primary schools, which I believe is the most effective way of approaching the issue. I discovered the power of using my group of year 8s to help boys in nursery and reception classes with their reading, put together drama projects with year 4 boys. It turned those boys around by giving them a positive focus for their natural leadership ability (the clue's in the name - peer leaders):it allowed them to succeed away from the prying eyes of their peers. I was also challenging gender stereotyping. And didn't those little boys really look up to those big boys!

Throughout these twenty three years I have been in a state of almost total disbelief that the underachievement of some of our boys (it tends to be poor white working class boys at the bottom of the heap) has failed to register in the majority of local authorities and in the country as a whole. Do some people really still think the reason for the underachievement of boys is the lack of male teachers in primary schools? Look, it's not going to happen, get over it, move on. It's not the gender of the teacher that is the most important thing. It's the quality of the teacher and their ability to relate to what's going on in a boy's head, in a boy's world, in a boy's universe. Do some people put it down to laddish behaviour? Well, actually laddish behaviour is a cry for help. Ever seen it that way? Because as far some boys are concerned, it's far better for them to be seen to be not bothered about winning than entering and not winning.

One thing that is certain however, is that for many boys we are simply starting formal education too early, forcing too many boys to read and write before they are mentally and physically ready In Scandinavia, where they don't start school formerly until they're seven, boys and girls achieve in roughly the same way throughout school.

In "The Lost Boys" a report from Save the Children published in July 2016, which looks at how boys are falling behind in their early years, they highlight the situation as thus "Since 2006 there has been a 20% improvement, an 8% reduction in the poverty gap but just 1% reduction in the gender gap". It's not going away. We need to increase the good work with parents pre-school, and the brilliant work that I have seen in many Early Years settings in recent years.

The DFE this year once more presented national statistics that show, yet again, boys being outperformed in every area in the foundation stage, at key stage 1, and in all subjects bar maths at key stage 2. If you'd like to find out more, you can get a quick overview of the results in this infographic.

Perhaps we should take heart that there was a debate in September 2016 in Westminster on the Educational Performance of Boys and that there were calls for action "The issue of our gender education gap and its impact has not been addressed adequately by this house or by successive governments of all colours and the education sector seems reluctant to take action on it. That is a shame." Karl M Cartney MP for Lincoln.

Watch this space.

We should also be encouraged by the many practical strategies that you can implement today that help close the gender attainment gap. Here are four actions that you could try:

1. Try this: In a recent project, part-sponsored by Oxford University Press, we created twenty small groups of peer police cadets.We gave them the name 'THE TRANSFORMERS' (Check out the film on Oxford Owl for School) and gave them responsibility to help out younger boys with their reading, and taking charge of eco projects around the school. Who says we don't have positive male role models? Schools are full of them! Or why not ask your local high school to send you down some of those decent young men on work experience or as Maths Ambassadors or Science Ambassadors.

2. Make a stimulating writing corner in your classroom planned by the children. Instead of having a home corner, have a space research station or a superhero base where missions are planned and reports written for the government. Use the kinds of paraphernalia attached to their favourite superheroes or TV or film characters. You can find lots of ideas from other schools on Pinterest.

3. Seek the boys' help to design and stock an area of the library, giving it real boy appeal. If you need help getting started, take a look at Oxford Bookmatch, a free tool on Oxford Owl for School, that allows you to search hundreds of children's books by genre, children's interests, levels etc.

4. Hold a parents' workshop that looks at boys' achievement to help address these issues. In these sessions you need to highlight the importance of developing independence in boys. Parents need to know the significance of male role models in the family - fathers, grandfathers, uncles, older brothers - and the important role they have in supporting their boys' education. Tell your parents to visit Oxford Owl for Home to access my free advice and 250 free ebooks including boy-friendly Project X eBooks.

Gary Wilson is an Education Consultant on Boys' Achievement, Advisor on (OUP) and author of "Breaking Through the Barriers to Boys' Achievement and Developing a Caring Masculinity" "Help Your Boys Succeed" "Raising Boys' Achievement: Pocket Pal" "100 Ideas for Primary Teachers: Raising Boys' Achievement" and (with Linda Tallent) "Boys Will Be BRILLIANT! " Bloomsbury Press.
garywilsonraisingboysachievement.com

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Four strategies to engage boys in literacy and close the gender gap

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"I've been working on raising boys' achievement since 1993... you'd have thought I'd have got it sorted by now" is regularly the opening line to one of my INSET days or keynote speeches. It usually provokes mild amusement. "But sadly I'm afraid there aren't that many people working on it."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
6 Strategies For Engaging Boys In The Classroom

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
6 Strategies For Engaging Boys In The Classroom

# data[].attributes.body
Choice board option- students can create board games OR P.E. games to demonstrate math skill knowledge

# data[].attributes.body
Walk arounds

# data[].attributes.body
I let my whole boy class pick their seat during independent work!

# data[].attributes.body
Wiggle time!

# data[].attributes.headline
Using STEM activities in the classroom and having to read directions to complete the task.

# data[].attributes.subject
Using STEM activities in the classroom and having to read directions to complete the task.