Almost everyday I see a teacher or parent get angry or frustrated at a child because ‘they don’t listen’. Most of the time it’s not the children who aren’t listening, it’s the adults.
Too often adults get frustrated when they ask a child ‘Can you put away your toys please?’ and the child answers ‘No’. Then the child gets frustrated when they get in trouble for not listening. They did listen and they answered the question, you just didn’t like the answer.
Adults seemed to forget the difference between a question/request and an order/command. If the child doesn’t have a choice then don’t offer them one.
Using the above example, it would be much better to say ‘Jimmy, it’s time to put your toys away now, thank you.’ Notice how it is directed at the child (using their name), firm and to the point yet still polite. Make sure to use thank you instead of please at the end. Please infers a request, while thank you gives praise for an action that is going to be done.
If you’re still having trouble with the child, try giving extra praise right after the order. For example ‘Sara, it’s time to go to bed now thank you. You’ve been such a good listener today I’m so proud of you. I think you deserve a special story tonight!’ The more praise you give them before they follow out the order the more pressure they feel to complete that order to deserve the praise they have been given.
I recently wrote about the importance of rewarding participation over knowledge within a classroom. I discussed how by doing this it helps everyone in the class learn more.
Today, I was thinking more about why we are so afraid of making mistakes or being seen doing the wrong thing? Society today puts far too much importance on being right, on not making mistakes. A mistake can cost you a job. A mistake can lead to disgrace or humility. A mistake can imply you are stupid!
But in reality how does one be an innovator or learn by ones self without making mistakes? Far too often I have children come up to me in class and ask me to do something for them. Can you draw me a picture of a cat? Can you build me a tower out of blocks? This scares the shit out of me! Why? Because our teaching is killing their creativity! They have already learnt that mistakes are bad and that things that look different are bad within our society. They want their picture of a cat to look like what society tells them it should look like. They’ve already decided what they aren’t. They’ve already decided what they can’t do. Or is it us as teachers and us as a society who has decided that for them?
This is exactly the opposite of what we as teachers should be striving for. I want my kids (the ones in my class) to have the whole world open in front of them. For them to have the confidence to do want ever they want to. To be true to their dreams and believe that they can accomplish anything.
Happily it seems I’m not the only one that believes this. Below is an amazing talk I stumbled across while surfing today that covers exactly how I have been feeling. It’s about 18 minutes long and well worth a watch for all parents, educators and students.
Praise your students for answering questions incorrectly! You heard me right, shower your students with praise when they don’t know the right answer, but try to answer anyway. This may sound completely backwards when you first hear it, but just think about it and it becomes clear.
If you only praise students that answer correctly then no one learns anything. Why? Simple the students that can answer already know the answer, and the kids that can’t don’t want to answer because there is no motivation for them to. If they aren’t answering then you can bet your ass that they probably aren’t listening either. On the other hand, if someone answers and gets it wrong, then they naturally want to know what the right answer is, and so will others. You learn more from a wrong answer than you do from a right one. So instead, encourage participation over knowledge. Praise everyone that raises their hand or even shouts out! Count yourself lucky, if you have a classroom full of students so eager to participate that they can’t even wait to put up their hands.
So, how do you get them participating? I like to play games and award points for answering whether right or wrong. Make sure to make teams and have a rule that states each member must answer before another team mate can answer again. This will cause students to encourage each other to participate. Remember give verbal praise and points for all answers, if it happens to be wrong encourage other students to help come up with the answer and explain it. Once you’ve played a couple of times, students will just get use to participating, trying to answering questions and helping others who answer incorrectly. Your classroom will transform from a teacher lead Q&A session with only a few students joining in to a classroom full of students participating and discussing ideas and reasoning behind those ideas with each other.
If your students feel comfortable and safe enough to answer a question even if they are most likely going to get the answer wrong, then you my friend are in the top 10% of teachers. Once you have them participating, you’ve got them listening and thinking. With participation knowledge will follow, it’s inevitable! It really is that simple.
What a brilliant tip For the kind of teaching I do the rewards and team thing won’t work, but I will be aware of how I respond to the wrong answers in the future. Thanks for posting
[...] bits are the important ones?I recently wrote about the importance of rewarding participation over knowledge within a classroom. I discussed how by doing this it helps everyone in the class learn [...]
Teacher’s College has started up again, so I’m back in to Uni on Wednesdays. We had our first day last week and were told we would be going on teaching practice (TP) this week. Not much notice for me to tell my pre-school that I would be away for the next two weeks on TP.
For those of you not in the know. I am in my final year of a Graduate Diploma in Early Childhood Education. I’m studying at Canterbury University in their College of Education via their Centre Based route. This allows me to work four days a week at a pre-school and come in to Uni one day a week to study. You are actually only required to do 16 hours of work a week, but I have bills to pay so I do the full 32 hours plus whatever shifts I’m needed at the liquor store.
Anywho, twice a year I am required to go on TP at another centre. This is a great opportunity to observe and learn how other centres work and stimulate learning among their children. In other words a great time to steal others ideas to use in your own centre. The problem with this is you don’t get paid while on TP. So that leaves me out of pocket for two weeks now and three weeks at the end of the year.
Airdmhor Montessori Outside
So, I have been on TP for the last week at the Airmhor Montessori. This is the first time I have worked at a Montessori school and I am really enjoying it. This particular Montessori has moved with the times and adapted there policies to be more up to date with todays early childhood teaching strategies. This has made them less strict with the children allowing more self exploration learning through free play while still providing wonderful structured learning activities. Resulting in some truly magnificent children who respect their environment and others within it, are academically ahead of their peers. All the while having a fun time and enjoying their childhood.
Working in Kindergartens in Taiwan I was amazed at how much the children were academically learning, but also upset with the lack of social interaction that was taking place. Most kids enjoyed the classes while there attention could be held, but often got over tired or upset with not being able to focus more on what they personally enjoyed. Resulting in incredibly academically smart children who were happy at the beginning of the session but turned into robots with in an hour or so, only to spark back into life when a particular subject they were truly interested in would be discussed. This allowed the kids to learn great amounts of knowledge through rote learning, but quite often the children found it hard to adapt that knowledge to solve real life problems.
Airdmhor Montessori Classroom
After returning to New Zealand and working in pre-schools here I found the tables had been completely switched. Children were encouraged to learn through free play while the teachers were almost completely taken out of the picture and only used as observers and guidance. These kids have a fun time, but seem to be quite often under stimulated. They are still learning basic academic skills through play like maths through blocks and pattern matching games etc. But teachers seem almost scared to help push them to the next level. Afraid to use real academic strategies in fear that it won’t be fun for the children. I have noticed this almost unlimited freedom seems to result in a lot of behavioral problems with in the classrooms.
I could see the benefits of both cultures education systems, but believe neither were offering a balanced one. That is why my goal is to open my own centre and work towards offering children a balance learning opportunity. Thanks to Airdmhor Montessori my minds picture of how that center will operate is much clearer now.
Ok, so I was playing with some kids at work yesterday and one of them had 10 cents. Being the show pony that I am I started to do magic tricks for them; pulling the coin from behind their ears, eating it then pulling it out of my tummy etc. The kids loved it and thought I was fantastic.
This morning when I come to work my co-worker tells me that one of the kids just about choked last night after I went home. “Really” I said “What happened?”. “That’s the strange thing, for some reason he was trying to eat some money. He’s old enough to know not to do that.” she said. Oh crap!
Things like this happen I guess, you’ve just got to learn from them. I learnt not to demonstrate to children how to eat small wind pipe blocking objects. So today I am on my best behaviour. I really don’t want a dead kid on my conscious.
While I was looking for a group of children that were showing an interest in language and literacy to observe, I noticed that on a whole the girls in the class seemed to be much more interested in the topic than the boys. Most girls were trying to write their names on art work by themselves while the boys would just take it to a teacher to name. Both the sexes were interested in stories that were read by the teacher but girls spent more time looking through story books by themselves. The boys did however enjoy looking through are space book but spent their time talking about the rockets rather than trying to put a story to the pictures. It is not surprising Read the rest of this entry »
For the kind of teaching I do the rewards and team thing won’t work, but I will be aware of how I respond to the wrong answers in the future. Thanks for posting
Kia ora Ki:
You are sharing some powerful thoughts and insights. Keep them coming.
Love,
Dad
Another great thought provoking post! That kind of behaviour in kids is a pretty scary.