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Carla Hayes
Whether you teach kindergarten or college, one of the
biggest challenges you probably have is keeping your students on
task, especially when the temperature heats up, the birds begin to
sing and the school year is nearing its end. Keeping students on
task is especially challenging and important for a blind teacher
who has to work very hard to keep on top of things in order to
maintain discipline in the classroom. Even we as teachers
sometimes have difficulty concentrating on what is going on in the
classroom when the weather is beautiful and we'd much rather be
outside; so, it's not hard to understand how our students feel.
How can you keep them working when they'd much rather goof
off?
For me, the most important factor of keeping students on
task is knowing when to tighten up and when to lighten up. Here
are some examples of tightening up. If students stop doing
homework, make the homework a more important part of their
total grade. When students start coming to class unprepared, all I
have to do is announce, "It's getting very close to test time," and
most of them immediately return to the straight and narrow. If you
are a college professor and notice that more students are cutting
classes, there are a number of ways to tighten up. You can give frequent tests. Include test questions whose
answers can only be obtained from classroom presentations,
making it necessary for students to do more than just reading the
book in order to succeed. Tightening up naturally occurs when
you assign final projects and papers and give final examinations.
One of the most controversial methods that I ever used for
tightening up occurred several years ago when I had an
especially difficult group of students in a German class. They
were extremely disrespectful to me and to each other and keeping
their attention was a challenge, no matter what I did. The whole
situation came to a head one day when I was reviewing for the
German final and they refused to pay attention. Finally, I closed
the book and calmly announced, "I refuse to teach you anymore
because you won't pay attention and it's a waste of time. You will
still have your German final on Thursday, but you are on your own
for the review. Meanwhile, I'm going to write the toughest
German final that I have ever written in my career. Good luck."
The next morning, the entire class begged me for a review and
promised to cooperate. We had our review and you could have
heard a pin drop during that entire class period. I never had
trouble with those students again. As you can see, it is often
necessary to tighten up if students start to goof off.
On the other hand, energy can start to ebb as both students
and teachers grow increasingly tired near the end of the academic
year. To make things worse, students are often overwhelmed by
the collective increased requirements of all their classes and
teachers. When this happens, it is very difficult for them to cope
with their work load and concentrate on any task. This is when
lightening up may be necessary. Here are some examples of
lightening up.
Give fewer homework questions when possible.
Confer with other teachers when scheduling tests so that students
will not have too many tests on the same day. Schedule a fun
activity such as a field trip, a guest speaker or an event such as a
science fair, a culture day or a demonstration related to what you
are teaching. When assigning a paper or final project, allow
students to choose topics of particular interest to them that
highlight certain aspects of what they have studied.
There are also simpler ways of lightening up. Hold a class outside if
possible. Instead of a boring review, have a review game. Of
course, never let students "go out" in a game because they will
just stand on the sidelines and cause discipline problems. Instead, give them an extra question to answer or task to perform.
In short, you are required to complete so many instructional hours
and days and finish a certain amount of the curriculum, but
nowhere is it written that learning can't be fun. Sometimes,
lightening up might be the best way to keep students interested,
involved and on task.
It goes without saying that students will stay on task if they
are interested and involved. To facilitate this, plan exciting,
relevant, well-paced lessons that accommodate diverse learning
styles. To deal with short attention spans, it's usually better to
have two or three shorter learning activities during a class period
rather than one long one. Incorporate humor, drama and plenty of
student participation into your classes. Supplement your
presentations with appropriate multimedia. Most important, if you
want to keep your students on task, make sure that your
curriculum and learning activities are appropriate for the age and
ability level of your students. Every learning task needs to be
challenging enough to help your students to grow and hold their
interest, but not so difficult that they cannot perform it. If you keep
these things in mind, you will be able to keep your students on
task not only during the last few weeks of school but throughout
the entire academic year.
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