This will have to be my last post until... I'm guessing around August 27th. This will have to be my last post until then simply because I'm not working right now. I get all of my ideas for posts from my experiences at my jobs. So yea, sorry for those of you who look at my blog regularly.
Anyway, the idea I'm going to talk about is how to get an unmotivated student to work on their in class assignment. There might be many ways, but I'll tell you one. Often, while I was teaching in the tutoring center, this one particular student would have this constant complaint for most in class assignments (it seemed like almost all of them). His common complaint would be "I don't know what to do!"
How did I respond? I would retell him the steps to complete. I thought that maybe sometimes even telling him ALL of the steps was too overwhelming for him. So, then I watered my explanation down. I would just tell him the very first step and have him do that. But, that didn't do a whole lot of good for me because then, as I was rotating throughout the room, he asked me again, "What do I do now?" That was problematic for me because then it distracted me from continuing to monitor the other students.
I noticed that he liked to talk with the student sitting next to him. So, I asked him if he wanted to work with the student next to him. He was happy with that. So, suddenly, instead of sitting down and doing nothing while waiting for me, he completed his work with his partner. I'm uneasy about that arrangement for one reason. I'm uneasy about it because I worry about them just copying each other's work. I would've been uneasy for a second reason which would be their distracting each other during the in class assignment, but that never happened.
So, bottom line, if a student does not focus on completing their work, find a student which they get along with, and have them work on the in class assignment together.
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