You are the teacher of an 8th grade English class. Your class is reading the novel "Huck Finn" by Mark Twain. You have a student named Renee in your class that has some significant challenges. She is living in her 3rd foster family in the past 4 years having been removed from her birth family because of severe neglect. She has been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder and is receiving speech and language services for a speech/language disorder where she has a difficult time processing what you are saying to her (receptive language). You do note that she has a significant strength in math. You have assigned the class the task of creating a keynote presentation that highlights the main events from each chapter. You have broken the class into groups of 3. Each group has 4 chapters they need to present. Their task is to find a picture online that could possibly illustrate an event or character in that chapter and to note the most important events of the chapter. When this project is complete, your hope is that you can put all of the chapters together and have a keynote summary of the text. Renee is working with a girl named Liz who is a straight A student and a boy name Josh who is the class clown. Renee is refusing to engage with the other members of the group. She says that the activity is "stupid" and she doesn't like the other two members of her group. What do you do? What action do you take to try to get Renee to engage?
Well I'd begin by explaining to Renee the importance of cooperative learning (working in groups). Cooperative learning allows students to learn from one another, students that have a hard time with one thing may be great at another and another student in the group may be just the opposite and therefore they can help one another succeed at both task. Cooperative learning can help each student in different ways. I would also let her know that students need to learn to cooperate and complete a task together because once your out of school you will work with people you don't like on things you don't particularly like either. I will tell her that it's an important skill that students must learn; to forget the differences and the dislikes and to work together collaboratively to complete a specific task. I will tell Renee that once we can overcome these first initial reactions to the assignment we can discover that working together can create something really great because everyone will be able to contribute their unique, individual part.
After this discussion I will act as a mediator in this particular group until I can get the group rolling and working collaboratively on this keynote project. I will work with this group to teach them that despite differences, working together can really be a great opportunity to learn something new and discover one another. Because this group does consist of a reluctant student and despite my attempts probably still won't want to work with these other students I will sit down with this group and get each of them including Renee to understand that just because we are collaboratively completing this project doesn't mean that each individual can't do their part which can all be combined to colabortively complete the keynote presentation. I will guide the group to success in breaking up the assignment...How do you guys think we could break up this project so that everyone has to complete an equal task that can ultimately be combined to satisfy the requires of the project? Hopefully they will come up with splitting up the chapter so that each member has one chapter that they need to illustrate. This way Renee can work on her part of the group project individually and if I'm still have difficulties getting her engaged I can give her an alternative options for illustrating her chapter.
To get Renee to see the bigger picture I may sit with her and discuss what will happen if she doesn't complete her part of the project. The class will be missing a chapter of their visual representation of "Huck Finn", therefore the the keynote summary will be less effective if there is suddenly a chapter missing. Perhaps the rest of the keynote presentation will be obsolete if we miss the essential, most important event of that specific chapter. Plus now her group and the class will be affected if she doesn't complete her part, her group is depending on her to do her part and the class is depending on her group to illustrate their assigned chapters.
The way I would get Renee engaged in illustrating her chapters is by asking her what she think would not be a stupid way to share with the class the important events of the chapter and what would be a better way to respond to this book. If she couldn't come up with an educational activity that would be as informative and helpful to the class I would have her either draw pictures of the most important event or character of the chapter and then teach her how we can scan it her drawing on to the computer and into her groups keynote presentation. She could also create her illustration by collage, paint, pen or she could even re-tell it using text on her keynote slide. By giving Renee alternative ways of presenting what she knows we may be able to tap into something she enjoys doing and that will be more effective for her to learn if she's doing something she cares about and is engaged in doing. Perhaps the choice of how she wants to illustrate it will help her feel like she is in charge of choosing what she does as she probably feels like she's always being told what to do and where to go from constantly being tossed from home to home. When a child doesn't want to do something there is probably a reason and a cause for that reluctant behavior and we as educators need to discover the cause and alter what we're teaching so it doesn't add to the reasons for that behavior.
Well I'd begin by explaining to Renee the importance of cooperative learning (working in groups). Cooperative learning allows students to learn from one another, students that have a hard time with one thing may be great at another and another student in the group may be just the opposite and therefore they can help one another succeed at both task. Cooperative learning can help each student in different ways. I would also let her know that students need to learn to cooperate and complete a task together because once your out of school you will work with people you don't like on things you don't particularly like either. I will tell her that it's an important skill that students must learn; to forget the differences and the dislikes and to work together collaboratively to complete a specific task. I will tell Renee that once we can overcome these first initial reactions to the assignment we can discover that working together can create something really great because everyone will be able to contribute their unique, individual part.
After this discussion I will act as a mediator in this particular group until I can get the group rolling and working collaboratively on this keynote project. I will work with this group to teach them that despite differences, working together can really be a great opportunity to learn something new and discover one another. Because this group does consist of a reluctant student and despite my attempts probably still won't want to work with these other students I will sit down with this group and get each of them including Renee to understand that just because we are collaboratively completing this project doesn't mean that each individual can't do their part which can all be combined to colabortively complete the keynote presentation. I will guide the group to success in breaking up the assignment...How do you guys think we could break up this project so that everyone has to complete an equal task that can ultimately be combined to satisfy the requires of the project? Hopefully they will come up with splitting up the chapter so that each member has one chapter that they need to illustrate. This way Renee can work on her part of the group project individually and if I'm still have difficulties getting her engaged I can give her an alternative options for illustrating her chapter.
To get Renee to see the bigger picture I may sit with her and discuss what will happen if she doesn't complete her part of the project. The class will be missing a chapter of their visual representation of "Huck Finn", therefore the the keynote summary will be less effective if there is suddenly a chapter missing. Perhaps the rest of the keynote presentation will be obsolete if we miss the essential, most important event of that specific chapter. Plus now her group and the class will be affected if she doesn't complete her part, her group is depending on her to do her part and the class is depending on her group to illustrate their assigned chapters.
The way I would get Renee engaged in illustrating her chapters is by asking her what she think would not be a stupid way to share with the class the important events of the chapter and what would be a better way to respond to this book. If she couldn't come up with an educational activity that would be as informative and helpful to the class I would have her either draw pictures of the most important event or character of the chapter and then teach her how we can scan it her drawing on to the computer and into her groups keynote presentation. She could also create her illustration by collage, paint, pen or she could even re-tell it using text on her keynote slide. By giving Renee alternative ways of presenting what she knows we may be able to tap into something she enjoys doing and that will be more effective for her to learn if she's doing something she cares about and is engaged in doing. Perhaps the choice of how she wants to illustrate it will help her feel like she is in charge of choosing what she does as she probably feels like she's always being told what to do and where to go from constantly being tossed from home to home. When a child doesn't want to do something there is probably a reason and a cause for that reluctant behavior and we as educators need to discover the cause and alter what we're teaching so it doesn't add to the reasons for that behavior.
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