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Teaching and Learning Center | University of the Sciences

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Coordinating faculty teaching activities for better student learning outcomes, the Teaching and Learning Center connects educators with expertise.

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Turn and Talk Sentence Starters Sharing ideas: I think... I wonder... It seems... Agreeing or Disagreeing: I agree with you and... I disagree because... Using evidence: On page ____ it says... Remember the part when... Proof from the text is... When you don't understand: Can you explain what you mean...

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Whole Class Discussion (From the research team of Platt&Wolfe)

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Whole Class Discussion (From the research team of Platt&Wolfe)

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By Rita Platt

Students love to talk. With a new emphasis on speaking and listening ushered in by the Common Core State Standards, teachers must learn to harness this social drive and use it to pull pull the wagon of content learning.

How? Through whole-class discussions.

When I was working on earning National Board Certification, I spent many hours designing a method for facilitating literature-based discussions. Below, I share with you the method that worked best for me.
Step 1:
Decide on a theme, issue or topic to discuss and develop an essential question to go with it. It is probably best to start with either slightly controversial topics or broad themes that appeal to the age group you teach. For example, when I taught 7th grade, I used the theme of justice because my students were very keyed into concepts of what they perceived to be "fair." The essential questions were, "What does it mean to be fair?" and "Is fair always equal?" With a 4th grade group, I used the topic of animal rights. This was a topic of keen interest to my students after they read The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate. The essential questions were, "Do animals have rights?" and "Should those rights different than those enjoyed by human beings?"

Finding themes to integrate with social studies or science topics is a good place to start. Also, it gives you a double bang for the buck because as students work on language arts skills they also learn content.
Step 2:
Choose the texts that students will read (or watch) to learn about the topic and explore differing perspectives. In the best-case-scenario, students will read a variety of texts in a number of formats all surrounding an essential question. For example an essential question I used with a 7th grade classroom was, "What does it mean to be free?" After allowing the students to do a short quick write on their initial thoughts concerning the question, we started reading.

Having an "anchor text" is helpful. This means that all students read at least one short shared text (a short-story, a poem, an article, or even a video.) In the freedom unit, we all read the short folk tale, The People Could Fly by Virginia Hamilton. We also read and analyzed a poem by Emily Dickinson, Emancipation.

After the whole-class reading was finished we moved into what I call the " individualized yet altogether" readings. These consist of various texts that students read by themselves, with partners, or in small groups. While these articles, poems, and stories all shared a theme of freedom, they are at students' independent reading levels. For more on this method, click here. To see a resource list for finding leveled texts, click here.
Step 3:
Once students have finished their reading, Allow them a class period or two to prepare for the whole-class discussion. To scaffold students, I gave them a list of questions to answer in writing. Students used all of the texts they had read to ponder the questions (below) and write answers to them.

What does it mean to be free?

Is freedom more of a body-thing or a mind-thing?

Are people free in the modern world?

Do you think you are free?

What text spoke most strongly to the theme?

I am very specific with students that answers must include direct textual evidence, including page numbers and quotes, so that during the discussion students can easily refer back to the texts.

Having a quiet room is important. This is not a discussion time, it is a time for students to think deeply and prepare to contribute to an intellectual conversation.
Step 4:
Prepare for the discussion by doing three things.

1. Set up a video recorder with audio. This first discussion must be recorded to show to students later.

2. Structure the room in such a way that all students can see each other, a circle of desks is best if you can manage it.

3. Ask students to put their texts on their desks along with the answers to the questions they wrote in the previous class period(s).

Start the discussion by asking your essential question, "What does it mean to be free?"

Here is where it can get tough for a teacher:

DON'T TALK!

Let the students talk. The point is for them to develop independent discussion skills, right? The teacher's role is to guide that learning.

As students talk, chart participation. This can be as simple as tallying the number of times each students speaks or as complex as mapping who speaks to whom. There may be some uncomfortable silences. There may be some interruptions. There may be some students who talk too much or who never talk at all. The conversation might flee from the topic.

That's okay. Here's why...

It is after this first class discussion that all of the learning happens. You will use students' nascent conversation as a video-text to have students analyze their participation, decide on strengths and needs at the individual and group levels, and to develop a rubric to guide them in their next discussion.

Have students watch the video recording of their discussion. As they watch, ask them to fill in two "T" charts. One labeled, "My Discussion Strengths/Needs" and one labeled, "The Class' Discussion Strengths/Needs."

Ask students to share their findings and use them to make a rubric or a checklist of what a good whole class discussion looks and sounds like. Sample rubrics/checklists can be seen here, here, and here.

Have students write personal goals for their participation in the next discussion.

Some goals my students wrote were:
"I will talk at least three times."
"I will try hard to include someone who isn't talking." "I use refer to the page of the text I am talking about." "I will try not to interrupt."
Repeat! Have students repeat the same discussion, video tape it again, and have students process their performance and the performance of the class as a whole using the "T" chart above and/or the class-created rubric.

Celebrate growth and start planning for the next whole-class discussion! My students liked the discussions and I felt that they were valuable enough that I generally facilitated one per quarter in my junior high classroom.

After you have a whole-class conversation under your belt, you will likely need to do some direct instruction with students on some of the needs you noted.

Common concerns include:

No one talked.

Some were off topic.

Interruptions.

Students didn't go deep enough.

There was not a real conversation, it was more like kids making a series of comments.

Some kids talked too much or not enough.

Don't let these things discourage you! Learning is a process. Each time students discuss, it will get better and more fluent.

Below are resources that can help you problem-solve!

Todd Finley offers a critique of discussions as they often are and a how-to for making them better.

The Big List of Class Discussion Strategies by Jennifer Gonzalez shares discussion strategies different than those offered above.

Truly, if you want to facilitate a successful whole-class discussion, you have to read Jeff Zwiers. He offers resources and scaffolds for teaching students to use the academic language needed for strong class conversations no matter what format you choose.
Rita Platt (@rit aplatt) is a Nationally Board Certified teacher. Her experience includes teaching learners of all levels from kindergarten to graduate student. She currently is a Library Media Specialist for the St. Croix Falls SD in Wisconsin, teaches graduate courses for the Professional Development Institute, and consults with local school districts.

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Let's Talk About It! Facilitating Whole-Class Discussions

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By Rita Platt Students love to talk. With a new emphasis on speaking and listening ushered in by the Common Core State Standards, teachers must learn to harness this social drive and use it to pull pull the wagon of content learning. How? Through whole-class discussions.

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Edutopia | Instructional Pacing: How Do Your Lessons Flow?

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Pacing a lesson so its nearly seamless takes expertise and practice -- and can be one of the greatest challenges for new teachers. For those more seasoned out there, here's a scenario many of us can relate to from the early days: way too much time for one learning activity, while not enough for another and clunky transitions in between.

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September 1995 | Volume 53 | Number 1
Strengthening Student Engagement Pages 8-12

(and what really motivates them)?

Richard Strong, Harvey F. Silver and Amy Robinson

How, then, would we define engagement? Perhaps the best definition comes from the work of Phil Schlecty (1994), who says students who are engaged exhibit three characteristics: (1) they are attracted to their work, (2) they persist in their work despite challenges and obstacles, and (3) they take visible delight in accomplishing their work.

Most teachers have seen these signs of engagement during a project, presentation, or lively class discussion. They have caught glimpses of the inspired inner world of a child, and hoped to sustain this wonder, enthusiasm, and perseverance every day. At the same time, they may have felt stymied by traditions of reward and punishment. Our challenge is to transcend these very real difficulties and provide a practical model for understanding what our students want and need.

Goals and Needs: The SCORE

As the responses to our questions showed, people who are engaged in their work are driven by four essential goals, each of which satisfies a particular human need:

Success (the need for mastery),

Curiosity (the need for understanding),

Originality (the need for self-expression),

Relationships (the need for involvement with others).

These four goals form the acronym for our model of student engagement- SCORE. Under the right classroom conditions and at the right level for each student, they can build the motivation and Energy (to complete our acronym) that is essential for a complete and productive life. These goals can provide students with the energy to deal constructively with the complexity, confusion, repetition, and ambiguities of life (the drive toward completion).

Rethinking Motivation

The concept of "score" is a metaphor about performance, but one that also suggests a work or art, as in a musical score. By aiming to combine achievement and artistry, the SCORE model can reach beyond strict dichotomies of right/wrong and pass/fail, and even bypass the controversy about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, on which theories of educational motivation have long been based.

Extrinsic motivation-a motivator that is external to the student or the task at hand-has long been perceived as the bad boy of motivational theory. In Punished by Rewards, Alfie Kohn (1995) lays out the prevailing arguments against extrinsic rewards, such as grades and gold stars. He maintains that reliance on factors external to the task and to the individual consistently fails to produce any deep and long-lasting commitment to learning.

Intrinsic motivation, on the other hand, comes from within, and is generally considered more durable and self-enhancing (Kohn 1993). Still, although intrinsic motivation gets much better press, it, too, has its weaknesses. As Kohn argues, because intrinsic motivation "is a concept that exists only in the context of the individual," the prescriptions its proponents offer teachers, are often too radically individualized, or too bland and abstract, to be applied in classroom settings (See "Punished by Rewards? A Conversation with Alfie Kohn," p. 13).

Perhaps it is the tradition of separating extrinsic and intrinsic motivation that is flawed. Robert Sternberg and Todd Lubart recently addressed this possibility in Defying the Crowd (1995). They assert that any in-depth examination of the work of highly creative people reveals a blend of both types of motivation.

Knowing the SCORE

After taking into consideration the needs and drives we've mentioned, our model poses four important questions that teachers must ask themselves in order to score the level of engagement in their classrooms.

1. Under what conditions are students most likely to feel that they can be successful?

2. When are students most likely to become curious?

3. How can we help students satisfy their natural drive toward self-expression?

4. How can we motivate students to learn by using their natural desire to create and foster good peer relationships?

Much of what we will discuss is already taking place in classrooms across the country. The point of our SCORE model of engagement is first to help teachers discover what they are already doing right and then to encourage the cultivation of everyday classroom conditions that foster student motivation and success.

Convincing Kids They Can Succeed

Students want and need work that enables them to demonstrate and improve their sense of themselves as competent and successful human beings. This is the drive toward mastery. But success, while highly valued in our society, can be more or less motivational. People who are highly creative, for example, actually experience failure far more often than success.

Before we can use success to motivate our students to produce high-quality work, we must meet three conditions:

1. We must clearly articulate the criteria for success and provide clear, immediate, and constructive feedback.

2. We must show students that the skills they need to be successful are within their grasp by clearly and systematically modeling these skills.

3. We must help them see success as a valuable aspect of their personalities.

All this seems obvious enough, but it is remarkable how often we fail to meet these conditions for our students. Take skills. Can you remember any crucial skills that you felt you did not successfully master because they were not clearly taught? Was it finding themes in literature? Reading and interpreting primary texts? Thinking through nonroutine math problems? Typically, skills like these are routinely assigned or assumed, rather than systematically modeled or practiced by teachers.

So how can we help students master such skills? When teaching your students to find themes, for example, deliberately model interpretation. Ask your students to give you a poem you have never seen, and then interpret it both for and with them. If they are reading primary texts, use what we call the "main idea" strategy. Teach them how to find the topic (usually a noun or noun phrase), the main idea (a sentence that states the text's position on the topic), and reasons or evidence to support the main idea. If students are concerned about writer's block, remember that perhaps the most difficult task of a teacher is to teach how to think creatively. Model the process of brainstorming, demonstrating that no idea is unworthy of consideration.

These are not revolutionary ideas. They simply illustrate how easily classroom practices can be improved, thus increasing the chance that your students will succeed.

But what of the criteria for success? Teachers define success in many ways. We must not only broaden our definition, but also make sure the definition is clear to everyone. In this way, students will know when they have done a good job, and they will know how to improve their work.

To achieve this clarity, we can present examples of work that illustrate high, average, and low levels of achievement. Such exemplars can significantly motivate students, as well as increase their understanding of their own ability to achieve.

Arousing Curiosity

Students want and need work that stimulates their curiosity and awakens their desire for deep understanding. People are naturally curious about a variety of things. Einstein wondered his whole life about the relationships among gravity, space, and electromagnetic radiation. Deborah Tannen, the prominent linguistic psychologist, has spent years pondering the obstacles that prevent men and women from conversing meaningfully.

How can we ensure that our curriculum arouses intense curiosity? By making sure it features two defining characteristics: the information about a topic is fragmentary or contradictory, and the topic relates to students' personal lives.

It is precisely the lack of organization of a body of information that compels us to understand it further. This may explain why textbooks, which are highly organized, rarely arouse student interest. We have stimulated students' curiosity by using a strategy called "mystery." We confront the class with a problem-for example, "What killed off the dinosaurs?"-and with the actual clues that scientists or historians have used to try to answer that question and others. Clues might include:

Mammals survived the changes that killed the dinosaurs.

Chickens under stress lay eggs with thinner shells than do chickens not under stress.

While flowering plants evolved, dinosaurs increased in population and in number of species.

Some flowering plants contain alkaloids.

Students then work together in groups, retracing the steps scientists took in weighing the available evidence to arrive at an explanation. We have seen students work diligently for several days dealing with false hypotheses and red herrings, taking great delight when the solutions begin to emerge.

As for topics that relate to students' lives, the connection here cannot be superficial; it must involve an issue or idea that is both manageable and unresolved. We must ask, With what issues are adolescents wrestling? How can we connect them to our curriculum? Figure 1 illustrates some possibilities for adolescents.

Encouraging Originality

Students want and need work that permits them to express their autonomy and originality, enabling them to discover who they are and who they want to be. Unfortunately, the ways schools traditionally focus on creativity actually thwart the drive toward self-expression. There are several reasons for this.

First, schools frequently design whole programs (art, for example) around projects that teach technique rather than self-expression. Second, very often only students who display the most talent have access to audiences, thus cutting off all other students from feedback and a sense of purpose. Finally, and perhaps most destructive, schools frequently view creativity as a form of play, and thus fail to maintain the high standards and sense of seriousness that make creative work meaningful.

How, then, should self-expression be encouraged? There are several ways.

Connect creative projects to students' personal ideas and concerns. One of our favorite teachers begins her study of ceramics by having students examine objects found in the homes of a variety of ancient civilizations. She then asks the class to design a ceramic object that expresses their feeling about their home.

Expand what counts as an audience. One of the most successful creative projects we have seen involved an audience of one. Each student in a middle school class was linked to an older member of the community and asked to write that person's "autobiography."

Consider giving students more choice. The medium of expression, for example, is often as important to an artist as the expression itself. What would have happened to the great tradition of American blues if the early musicians were forced to adhere to traditions of European music? This is one more argument for instructional methods that emphasize learning styles, multiple intelligences, and cultural diversity.

Use the "abstracting" strategy to help students fully understand a genre and to maintain high standards (Marzano et al. 1992). Too often, students prefer video art to a book because they perceive it as less demanding or requiring less commitment. Teaching students to abstract the essence of a genre will change their perceptions.

Begin by studying examples of high-quality work within a genre (the science-fiction story, poster art, sonnets, frontier diaries, television news programs, and so on). Examine the structure of the works and the standards by which they are judged. Then, ask students to produce their own work in that genre that expresses their own concerns, attempting to meet the high standards embodied in the original work. Finally, have the students ask themselves four questions about their work: How good is my technique? Does my work truly express my own concerns? Does it demonstrate my understanding of the genre in which I am working? Does it successfully relate to its audience?

Some people worry that the stringency of this model might actually block self-expression, but our experience is precisely the opposite. Students' drive toward self-expression is ultimately a drive to produce work that is of value to others. Lower standards work to repress, not to enhance, the creation of high-quality work.

Fostering Peer Relations

Students want and need work that will enhance their relationships with people they care about. This drive toward interpersonal involvement is pervasive in all our lives. Further, most of us work hardest on those relationships that are reciprocal-what you have to offer is of value to me, and what I have to offer is of some value to you. In general, unbalanced, nonreciprocal relationships prove transient and fail to generate much energy or interest.

How does this insight apply to life in the classroom? Consider a student's perception of homework. The only relationship that can be advanced through the typical homework assignment is the one between student and teacher. And this relationship is essentially unbalanced. Students do not feel that the teacher needs their knowledge, and the teacher, with possibly 145 students a day, probably isn't seeking a deep relationship either.

But suppose student work is complementary: one student's job is to learn about tortoises, another's is to learn about snakes, and a third student is boning up on lizards. After they do their research, they jointly develop a poster comparing and contrasting these three reptile types. The students actually need one another's knowledge.

Annemarie Palincsar Brown has applied this "jigsaw" strategy to inner-city students using in-classroom computer networks (Brown et al. 1993). She found that it significantly improved their motivation, reading, and writing. Elizabeth Cohen (1994) builds reciprocal groups by asking students with different talents and abilities to work on one project that requires all of their gifts.

Orchestrating Classroom Performance

As teachers, the first thing we should try to "score" is our own performance. Different people value the four goals we have discussed to different degrees in different situations. Which ones are particularly important to you? How does this preference affect the way you run your classroom? By observing and understanding how classroom conditions can create or repress student engagement, we can gradually move toward a more successful, curious, creative, and reciprocal school system.

All students, to some extent, seek mastery, understanding, self-expression, and positive interpersonal relationships. But they are all different as well. Imagine what could happen if we engaged our students in a discussion of these four types of motivation. What might they tell us about themselves and their classrooms? Could we actually teach them to design their own work in ways that match their own unique potential for engagement?

Last, we can score the change process itself. What professional conditions block teachers' motivation? We can redesign staff development to promote understanding and respect among school staff members.

By seeking to break down boundaries between teacher and teacher, teacher and student, student and the learning process, we will learn what students want and need. As a result, more and more teachers may go to bed at night remembering the images of wonder, enthusiasm, and perseverance on the faces of their students.

References

Brown, A., D. Ash, M. Rutherford, K. Nakagawa, A. Gordon, and J. Campione. (1993). "Distributed Expertise in the Classroom." In Distributed Cognitions: Psychological and Educational Considerations, edited by G. Salomon. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Cohen, E. G. (1994). Designing Groupwork: Strategies for the Heterogeneous Classroom. 2nd Edition. New York: Teachers College Press.

Kohn, A. (1993). Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, and Other Bribes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Marzano, R., D. Pickering, D. Arredondo, G. Blackburn, R. Brandt, and C. Moffett. (1992). Dimensions of Learning. Alexandria, Va.: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Schlecty, P. (January 1994). "Increasing Student Engagement." Missouri Leadership Academy.

Sternberg, R. J., and T. I. Lubart. (1995). Defying the Crowd: Cultivating Creativity in a Culture of Conformity. New York: The Free Press.

Richard Strong is Vice President and Director of Curriculum Development, Harvey F. Silver is Vice President and Director of Program Development, and Amy Robinson is Director of Research and Publishing, Hanson Silver Strong and Associates Inc., 34 Washington Rd., Princeton Junction, NJ 08550.

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Strengthening Student Engagement: What Do Students Want

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September 1995 | Volume 53 | Number 1 Strengthening Student Engagement Pages 8-12 (and what really motivates them)? Richard Strong, Harvey F. Silver and Amy Robinson How, then, would we define engagement?

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I guarantee, if you're anything like me, you've been there before. Maybe it was during your undergrad. Maybe during your credential program. Maybe it's been at (dare I say it?) a professional development seminar. You're sitting there watching a bunch of projected slides, with a bunch of handouts in front of you. You nod when you're supposed to. You talk to the people next to you when you're supposed to. You leave the class for the day and never return to the material you just "learned." Sound familiar?

In these situations, like the good and dutiful students we are, we were compliant. We did what we were asked. We passed. We got our hours. We left. But were we engaged?

What is the difference between compliance and engagement?
If we jump out of the student role and into our teacher role, we can learn a lot about this potential problem. Brilliant, well-prepared, well-meaning educators fall into this trap all the time. We know this because we've all experienced it from the other side of the podium. The word itself--compliance--conjures up images of factories, machines, and robots. And if there's something I don't want to do, it's churning out a bunch of robots from my classroom. I want to help raise up thinkers.

If we take a hard look at our own teaching methods, though, we might ﬁnd that we, unintentionally, enable compliance through our expectations of students. Eek. Our kids, ESPECIALLY our best and brightest, know exactly what to do to comply to get the grade.

But is that why each of us have made the sacriﬁces we have to commit our lives to teaching? Heck no! We all want full engagement! We want my classroom to be a place where kids love to learn for the sake of learning and expanding, not just for the external reward of a grade or a passed class.

So how do we do this?
Enter the LTA Environment. The LTA Environment is what we hope all our classroom environments to be. It is made up of four elements that support us teachers in shaping our students into lifelong learners when the enter into our four classroom walls, each and every day.

In trying to solve the issue of compliance vs. engagement, let's look at one of those four elements: Engagement.

There are three ways we can engage students: physically, socially, and intellectually.

1. Physical Engagement
Physical engagement occurs when we move our students around. We get them out of their seats to do a 4-corners activity. We have them raise different color cards to help us check their understanding. We have them circulate for a gallery walk. We can have them make appointments in their appointment books. Physical engagement is good and necessary, but if done alone, is actually the least effective engagement strategy because kids can still comply passively. To kick the engagement up, it's imperative we add the other two methods. Which, brings us to number 2...

2. Social Engagement
Social engagement, simply put, gets kids talking. Research states that the most effective learning environments for students engage them in discussion or sharing activities every 5-8 minutes to help them process ideas. But these discussions don't have to take forever. Even a quick 20 second exchange can keep the energy up in your classroom and help your students comprehend and retain information, particularly from a rigorous text. It asks all students to socially engage, not just the ones raising their hands, having, in essence a one-on-one conversation with the teacher with 35 other onlookers. Teachers may choose to have longer lessons that engage students socially, like a socratic circle discussion. Some fun ways to get kids engaged socially can be found under collaborative work. Like the physical engagement strategy, however, social engagement activities can devolve into compliance activities if the questions we ask don't challenge our students intellectually. We do this by promoting high-level thinking. And that, then, brings us to number 3...

3. Intellectual Engagement
Intellectual engagement happens when we put the onus on our students to create meaning from the questions or challenges we present within our discipline. It allows us to step out of the role of "Deliverer of Information" and into the role of "Facilitator." Without intellectual engagement, physical and social engagement becomes play time and an opportunity for passive compliance. If your kids leave your classroom still talking about what you were all discussing in class, you know you've hit the sweet spot of intellectual engagement. We get to this level when we have challenged our students through the questions and tasks we ask them to do with the information we have presented.

When our classroom environment models the LTA environment, all three engagement strategies are happening.
Engagement is seen when students...

form arguments and support their claims with strong evidence or supporting details.

lift individual white boards high into the air with answers to a higher level question.

analyze and synthesize complex ideas through speaking or writing.

apply knowledge to new learning experiences in class, online, or outside.

evaluate the validity or credibility of an idea or process.

work in pairs or small groups to solve problems.

collaborate online using 21st century tools.

apply scientific principles and methods to authentic research.

Stay engaged by joining the conversation
If you, or your colleagues are working on engaging students, share this post by forwarding it to a friend, posting it on Facebook, or tweeting about, using the social sharing buttons below.

We know, that as experts in your field, engagement can be seen in lots of ways. Please leave a comment below and let us know how you either physically, socially, or intellectually engage your students.

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We're Engaged! or 3 Must-Do Strategies to Move from Compliance to Engagement

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I guarantee, if you’re anything like me, you’ve been there before. Maybe it was during your undergrad. Maybe during your credential program. Maybe it’s been at (dare I say it?) a professional development seminar. You’re sitting there watching a bunch of projected slides, with a bunch of handouts in front of you.

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The Think-Pair-Share strategy is designed to differentiate instruction by providing students time and structure for thinking on a given topic, enabling them to formulate individual ideas and share these ideas with a peer. This learning strategy promotes classroom participation by encouraging a high degree of pupil response, rather than using a basic recitation method in which a teacher poses a question and one student offers a response.

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This strategy permits all students to participate in discussion, rather than only a few students participating in a class-wide discussion. All students are able to process new learning while engaging in meaningful conversation with a classmate.

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Aggregated by Rita Platt

When it comes to teaching and learning, motivation is the name of the game. The best teachers are good salesman, only instead of selling goods they are selling ideas. Make no mistake; it is your job to motivate, to persuade, and to get children to believe that they want what you're selling them. You may not like that, but it's true. If you want your students to learn from you, the key is to figure out how to make them want to learn from you. This is a tall order, but there are plenty of resources to help you as you make the commitment to increase motivated learning in your classroom. Below are many of them. Take 10-minutes, an hour, two hours, three hours, whatever time you need, and run through the resources. You will be a happier teacher with motivated students and your students will learn more.
It's worth the time. QUESTIONS FOR THOUGHT
Work alone, with a group of like-minded teachers, or with your Professional Learning Community to think about/discuss these questions as you embark on this motivation safari:

1. Does motivation come from success? Cause success? Neither? Both?

2. How can all of the data we collect about students increase their motivation?

3. Can students learn to be motivated?

4. How do setbacks and challenges affect motivation?

5. How can you "measure" motivation in your classroom? How can you use the results of this measurement to increase motivation?

THE RESOURCES RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us
Before anything else, anyone who is interested in motivation needs to hear Dan Pink's amazing talk about the research concerning what motivates us. Pink is a journalist who aggregated the research on motivation and came to illuminating conclusions. His book, Drive , is very good, but the 10-minute video of him talking about his work is both exceptionally helpful and entertaining. In a nutshell, Pink says that in order to be motivated a person must have autonomy or choice, a clear purpose for what they are doing, and the perception that they can achieve mastery.
Carol Dweck on Helping Students Develop a "Growth Mindset"
Dweck is a researcher who shares how perceptions of ability can effect motivation. In the short video above, she explains that the brain is like a muscle and that each of us can actually get smarter by exercising our brains. Further she offers solid instruction on how to help students to see themselves as capable learners through introducing them to what she calls a "growth mindset." She also offers council on how to praise effort rather than ability, which in turn builds a growth mindset. Her book Mindset: the New Psychology of Success is a terrific read. If you don't have time for it, put it on your to-read list and enjoy the articles below in the meantime.
How Not to Talk to Your Kids: The Inverse Power of Praise You can Grow Your Intelligence: New Research Shows the Brain Can Be Developed Like a Muscle PDF Larry Ferlazzo on "Self-Driven Learning"
If you're not familiar Ferlazzo's blog , you'll be amazed at the wealth of resources he offers. Ferlazzo is a working teacher; his writing is exceptionally astute and wonderfully easy-to-read. The blog is filled with resource lists, questions and answers on a wide variety of educational topics, and interviews. It is billed as being for ESL teachers but the content is good for all teachers. Above is a brief narrated PowerPoint summarizing some of his findings about how to best motivate students. His two books on motivation, Self-Driven Learning: Teaching Strategies for Student Motivation and Helping Students Motivate Themselves: Practical Answers To Classroom Challenges are both good. The latter, though, is a virtual treasure-trove and I think of it as a "must-have" for your teaching library.
My (Rita Platt) Work on Data-Based Motivation
In my 16 years teaching I have taught learners from grade pre-K through graduate level and have worked with students from tough inner cities, from troubled and very remote Inuit villages, from mid-sized university towns, and from rural Wisconsin. In all cases I found using the most effective path to motivating students was helping them to "see" their own growth as learners. My methods include using quick and easy assessments to help students keep track of their own evidence of learning. Since most teachers already collect a growing assortment of data points to guide their teaching, why not use that data to harness student motivation toward academic achievement growth? Above is a narrated PowerPoint that guides readers through using data as a motivational tool, helping students set and monitor their own growth goals, and a how-to primer on using simple and effective assessments. For more resources, visit my Wiki page on Data-Based Motivation here.

If you are seriously interested in increasing student motivation you have to ask your students what they think of your class. This can be scary but it is a must. Above is a link to a Gates Foundation information brief on the what's, why's, and how's of student surveys (including samples.) In Wisconsin, as in many other states, we are now mandated to include student surveys in our teaching practices as a part of our comprehensive evaluation system. While the overall system is less than great, this aspect of it is truly wonderful. Students are our clients we should be regularly asking for feedback and using that feedback to meet their needs. Of course, to really motivate students, they must see that we've taken their feedback seriously and made changes based on their observations. I often ask for feedback, share the results of that feedback and then explicitly share with students the changes I will make. It works. For more sample surveys (pdf) look here , here, and here (my favorite). The truly brave can check out Rate My Teacher.com, heck, I'm going to be really brave and add a link to the place where my 7 th graders rated
Possible Action Steps
Now that you've browsed the resources, make a plan to work toward increased motivation in your classroom! Below are possible action steps.
Work alone, with a group of like-minded teachers, or with your Professional Learning Community to:
1. Study the resources and think about/discuss the Questions for Thought

2. Adopt, adapt, or design a survey like those above. Analyze the results.

3. Use the information gathered in 1 & 2 above to write a plan to increase motivation. Make sure it is a SMART goal and hold yourself to it!

I hope you enjoyed the videos, ideas, articles, and resources. I hope you're now motivated to increase motivation in your own classroom. In the meantime, feel free to join the conversation. Share your thoughts, suggest more resources, whatever you want, I am looking forward to hearing from you!

Contact me at We Teach We Learn, ritaplatt@hotmail.com, or @ritaplatt.
Rita Platt is a Nationally Board Certified teacher. Her experience includes teaching learners of all levels from kindergarten to graduate student. She currently is a Library Media Specialist for the St. Croix Falls SD in Wisconsin, teaches graduate courses for the Professional Development Institute, and consults with local school districts. Image Credit

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Increasing Student Motivation: A Teacher Toolkit

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Aggregated by Rita Platt When it comes to teaching and learning, motivation is the name of the game. The best teachers are good salesman, only instead of selling goods they are selling ideas. Make no mistake; it is your job to motivate, to persuade, and to get children to believe that they want what you're selling them.

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27 Ways to Increase Active Participation

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27 Ways to Increase Active Participation

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Student engagement in learning is kind of important.

No matter the best practices of your curriculum mapping, instructional strategies, use of data for learning, formative assessment, or expert use of project-based learning, mobile learning, and a flipped classroom, if students aren't engaged, most is for naught.

Historically, student engagement has been thought of in terms of students "paying attention": raising hands, asking questions, and making eye contact. Of course, we know now that learning can benefit from learner self-direction and self-initiated transfer of thinking as much as it does simple "engagement" and participation.

That being said, increasing engagement and sheer participation is not a wrong-headed pursuit in and of itself, and in pursuit of that is the following infographic from Mia MacMeekin: 27 ways to increase student engagement.
27 Ways To Increase Student Engagement In Learning

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27 Ways To Increase Student Engagement In Learning

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Student engagement in learning is kind of important. No matter the best practices of your curriculum mapping, instructional strategies, use of data for learning, formative assessment, or expert use of project-based learning, mobile learning, and a flipped classroom, if students aren't engaged, most is for naught.

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Student Engagement & Motivation Strategies & Tips

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Classroom Management & Student Engagement

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7 ways to Increase Student Engagement in the Classroom