How to Ensure Both You and Your Students Make it to the End of the School Year
Dear Kid Whisperer,
I have a 3rd grade student who has just decided to stop doing work. We have less than a month of school left, and I am drained and I don’t have the energy to try to make this student do his work. What now? -Chelsea, Oakland, California
Chelsea,
It sounds like both you and this student are just trying to survive until June.
You might be surviving by not quite doing the best lesson plans and going home a little (or a lot) earlier than you did before COVID Year I and COVID Year II hit. He seems to be surviving by taking the last grading period of third grade as an elective. All of this is understandable.
It is very likely, coming out of the COVID years, that this kid has not gotten much attention and it’s very likely that he, like all of us, has not had his control needs met. Seeking attention and control is generally what kids do, and here at the end of this year, they have been seeking it considerably more than usual.
Here’s how to manage ALL of your students’ independent work time so that ALL of your students have their needs for control and attention fulfilled, while never telling kids to work hard (because you can’t make them work hard, and they know it).
Let everyone know that from now on, all independent work will be done during Workshop. When you give an assignment, that task will be called a “Now” activity. If left incomplete, it must be done once other “Nows” are completed. Once all “Nows” are completed, students can move on to “Laters”: activities that are generally more fun than “Nows” and are aligned to common core standards for the subject(s) you teach. In addition, there should be a “Mystery Later”: a (usually) non-academic and always highly interesting activity. Signified with a mere question mark, you can erase the question mark at some point, and write “Chromebook Games,” “Recess,” “Play in the Gym,” or something else that is similarly amazing.
This procedure encourages the completion of work by creating a real-life situation whereby people can do things they’d rather do once they are done with the things they have to do, just like in life! The promise of doing AWESOME “Laters” does the teaching about hard work instead of your nagging (which doesn’t).
Your board may look like this:
Nows
Math Book Page 341 #s 1-12
Write a persuasive letter to Principal Jones
Laters
Play math games
Read
Write a persuasive letter to any celebrity
?
In addition, you will systematically reinforce hard work by using an essential strategy for all teachers called Strategic Noticing. Remember that need for attention and control? By systematically noticing the behaviors we want to see (in this case, working hard), and noticing the specific “academic behaviors” we want to see, we can give attention in a healthy way. Here’s how I did it in my classroom:
Kid Whisperer: And that’s how to add fractions! Here’s an assignment to practice that skill. We are now in workshop; you know what to do!
Kid stares off into space for five minutes and is ignored. He eventually picks up a pencil and half-heartedly begins working as he starts to see his classmates being able to do things that he would also like to do.
Kid Whisperer: I notice you working.
Kid: SO!?!?!?
Kid Whisperer: I just happened to notice.
Kid grunts.
Kid Whisperer makes his rounds, and later whispers from above Kid’s shoulder:
Kid Whisperer: I noticed that you showed your work.
By using this one procedure and this one strategy, you and Kid can get to that blessed last day of school while everyone has their needs for control (and sanity) met.