Challenge children

Human beings feel best in flow, when they are fully involved in meeting a challenge, solving a problem, discovering something new

Children, as well as adults, love being absorbed in a task. And only when we are absorbed and focussed on what we are doing can we learn well. We can get lost in a good book, a good film, a good conversation, painting a picture and this gives a great sense of satisfaction and pleasure. There are too many distractions vying for our attention throughout the day. Have you noticed your students staring out of the window when they should be doing an exercise in their book. Their minds have wandered, perhaps distracted by a soaring bird or an airplane flying over the school. These triggers have captured their imagination, have proved a welcome relief to the tedium of the task at hand. So the task at hand should be attractive and also challenging to keep the student’s mind focussed.

There are many tasks that children find challenging in the class that can absorb them and stretch their thinking capacities. Take for example a simple activity like this. Write these letters on your board – I B A E N R D C, ask the children to work in small teams of 2 or 3 and create as many words as possible using these words – bean, in, rice, bread etc. Watch them get excited trying to get as many as possible, watch them collaborate and help each other with spelling and even telling each other what a word means. Energy levels rise, interest is roused and the atmosphere in the room changes. That’s the atmosphere of a learning, motivated class.

Fun and Games

This brings me on to what I believe is a crucial motivating element in any classroom, in any workplace in any home – fun. From a long time ago the need to play has been recognised as a key component to children’s learning. An 18th Century Frenchman was exhorting us to encourage free expression and natural playfulness…

Jean Jacques Rousseau, 1762

And the cry was still heard in the 20th Century, with Jean Piaget stressing that :

play leads to consolidation of newly learned behaviours… exposing the child to new experiences and new possibilities for dealing with the world

Laughter is very motivating. Pleasure is very motivating.

We play games in class to make students feel comfortable, to help the language be memorable, to practise language, to facilitate involvement and because we recognise that language learning is affective as well as cognitive.

Of course we must choose games that recycle the English that students have been studying. They are a great way of helping students review and use language in different ways – crosswords, quizzes, riddles, guessing games etc.

Beware of red-pen-it-is (the deadly disease, known only to teachers, of being unable to look at any work of a student without automatically reaching for red pen)

Assessment is an area that teachers consider very serious. It is often the most formal aspect of the teaching we do. But do we get into bad habits in the way we assess? I have shown the following piece of writing to many teachers over the years asked their opinion about it. Please note it is just the opening few lines of a short story.

On year 10,000 scientists found a very big problem! A very tiny microchip was into a computer. This microchip could destroy the hole world. Scientists were trying over five years to destroy it but it was so impossible.

A twelve year old Greek student of English

The question I ask is ‘What would you do with this, if a student handed it in to you as their homework?’ many teachers hone in immediately on the mistakes and start correcting. One teacher even screwed up the paper I handed her with this printed on and said she would throw it in the rubbish bin. Shame on her. Are we so programmed to see errors that we don’t see the great things that students produce? This is a fabulous introduction to a story. It is dramatic and draws the reader in to discover what this awful problem could possibly be. The contrast between ‘very tiny microchip’ and its capacity ‘to destroy the hole world’ is powerful indeed. (That spelling mistake in comparison is minor.) And don’t forget to look at the complex structure of the final sentence – well crafted indeed.

Let’s not forget Julian Edge and his call for us to appreciate the learning steps our children are making – and jolly well celebrate them too!

Homework

Let’s be honest – homework is often the least motivating assignment that children get. It’s the long writing composition or the grammar exercises. How many times do you look at what is given in and despair as your hand reaches for the pack of red pens that you will need to tackle this mammoth task? Do your students sometimes do their homework in front of the television, on the bus or even copy it from their friend while walking into their lesson; or even, heaven forbid, get their mother to do it for them? The resulting anguish on both our parts – for us at having to mark work that we actually know is substandard and does not reflect what they could do when motivated, and for the children handing it in whose heart just wasn’t into the chore and whose heart sinks even further when it is returned covered in red ink and stamped with a low mark or grade.

Why can’t homework be more fun and more motivating? I think it’s because many of us run out of steam by the end of the lesson and assign tasks automatically – often things that can be marked easily. In my mind, it is better to have children do something, anything well and with some enthusiasm for five minutes at home than in the desultory manner described above. Why can’t children just be asked to read something in English that they enjoy – a magazine, story or website, thereby fostering their pleasure in using English and respecting their choice of what they read? Why can’t children illustrate a story they wrote in class, thereby rereading the story and thinking carefully about its meaning while putting crayon or brush to paper? Why can’t students chose an English song they like and transcribe the lyrics to share with their classmates in a future lesson, thereby honing their listening and concentration skills and playing a part in shaping one of their own lessons?

Just pause a second before you set the next homework for you class and consider how motivated you would be by a similar task and is there any way you can make it more meaningful and / or more fun for your students to do.