I recently recieved this email from a colleague at a school I've been working with as they transition to Standards Referenced Grading. I think it's a pretty universal concern and I'm happy to provide some thoughts on the topic. Got a question I can help with? Email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., shoot me a message at Facebook.com/Edunators, or on Twitter @MarkClementsEdu.
Hey Mark,
Hope you are well. We are looking for general resources on supporting students who refuse to work. Anything you recommend? We are trying to treat refusal as a negative behavior rather than punish with low scores.”
-John (Middle School teacher, name changed).
You’re right to treat it as a behavioral one, not an academic one. Task completion is behavior and since ultimately behavior is a form of communication, we have to ask “What is this student telling us by not doing the work?” or put differently “Why aren’t they doing the work assigned?”
The simplest answer is because the task assigned is NOWHERE NEAR as compelling as whatever else they’re choosing to do, such as talk to friends, etc. To paraphrase Rick Wormeli “We know the old saying ‘You can lead a horse to water’ but the question isn’t ‘how do we make him drink’ but rather ‘how do we make him THIRSTY.’”
Teachers don’t like to hear it, but sometimes the problem is the assignment itself. We need to make assignments relevant however possible, make real world connections, connections to previous learning (scaffolding), explain why it’s important to future learning, etc. Check out Dave Burgess’ “hooks” as a means of making the material more compelling. Especially with middle school kids, anything that is novel, gross, taboo, funny or incorporates talking and movement is more likely to get finished. Providing choice whenever possible also increases the likelihood assignments are completed.
Assignments that are perceived as boring or irrelevant will always lead students choose something else, especially if the task is difficult. John Hattie actually cites “boredom” as having a negative impact on student achievement - even more so than depression.
If your principal handed you a worksheet of one-digit addition problems at your next faculty meeting and said “Do this” with no further instruction, you wouldn’t see the point or understand why, but the task would be simple/quick enough that you’d go ahead and do it with a puzzled look on your face. However, if that same principal handed you forty pages of advanced calculus, you’d probably have a few more questions. Sadly to many of our students, the “grade level” coursework we hand them feels like our principal handing us copious amounts of advanced mathematics - out of context, and too difficult to apply sustained effort or even attempt.
It’s part of the reason why relationships matter so much in regards to student motivation...if you trust the person assigning the task has purpose and won’t unnecessarily ‘hurt’ you, you’ll complete it. If you don’t trust they have a sufficient reason to task you with pain, you probably won’t. (Need some new ideas? Check out our 15 Ways to Build Positive Relationship With Students).
This is especially true of “at-risk” students who struggle with learned helplessness. They simply don’t have a personal track record of being successful when they attempt tasks like the ones we’re asking. Thus, their ego (overly powerful at this age) can’t handle failure.
We can combat this by breaking down tasks into smaller pieces and DRASTICALLY increasing the feedback cycle. I once had a student who had never written anything longer than a few sentences and completed a five paragraph essay with my stopping by his computer to provide feedback and direction on EVERY SENTENCE as I moved around the room and helped the other students. Was it draining and time intensive? Yes - but he completed the work, learned A LOT, gained a great amount of self-efficacy and his behavior was the best it ever had been, because I was providing feedback so consistently.
More importantly, you alluded to not wanting to punish students with lower scores, and this is a very important point .One of the things that happens when we start trying to improve grading practices is we begin “grading” far fewer assignments (which we should, so as to not combine summative & formatives together, especially through averaging). Unfortunately, this sometimes means that if we’re not “grading” it, inexperienced teachers fail to provide specific, meaningful, feedback on it. This is why many schools on the journey to assessment for learning worry “Won’t students stop doing it if it’s not for a grade?” and that may be what you’re experiencing. (It’s important to remember that you probably had students who weren’t completing work before, too. So this problem is not purely related to how you grade).
Students DON’T work for a grade. They DO work for FEEDBACK. Check out this article from Jan Chappuis about effective feedback. Set goals with the student (or all students) and eventually teach them to set their own. You might have to “check-in” with your struggling learners and provide feedback every 15, 10, or even 5 minutes at first to help build that self-efficacy. It’s time intensive for sure, but so is chasing missing assignments.
You can also increase the feedback cycle by providing students exemplars and teaching them to compare their work to other student work (provide by strong and poor examples for comparison). Teaching students to self-assess is a powerful motivational tool. Likewise, peer assessment can be another powerful tool used in a similar fashion. Some teachers will develop certain “checkpoints” throughout the hour, in which at predetermined times, students “partner up” for a few minutes and provide each other feedback, with the teacher making a specific point to “check-in” with certain pairings during this time he or she knows may be struggling. Be sure to celebrate the small successes along the way, they’re likely struggling for a reason and will need that.
Oddly enough, it may be that all of the constant feedback has a dramatic impact on the teacher’s relationship with the student and THAT may be what is what leads to increased task completion and learning.
Be sure to spend time “debriefing” the learning process with students as well. Make connections between times when they completed work and were successful, and times they did not complete assignments and were not successful on summatives. Don’t assume students make these connections naturally, they often don’t. It takes a guiding hand illustrating that their work is leading to learning...otherwise kids (and even some adults) simply assume the “smart” kids are successful. (Check out our 35 Questions for Student Reflection or learn more about the Importance of Reflection in Education).
ALL THAT SAID….if you’ve made the content as palatable as possible, developed a strong relationship with the student, done everything in your power to make the student “thirsty”, ensured your feedback is timely and specific, or if you just think there’s A CHANCE the student is academically capable but is just choosing to goof-off instead, you could always try not letting them leave the room until they’ve completed an amount of work you deem appropriate (I wrote about this HERE). Coordinate it with your team, but you may find that after a couple times of the student sitting in the same spot for a few hours they become highly motivated and suddenly perfectly capable of doing the work. If they STILL don’t….you’re very likely asking them to do something they’re not capable of doing and you need to treat this as an academic concern. Work backward through the prerequisite skills, figure out where they’re hung up, provide more time and keep plugging away.
Got a question I can help with? This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and let me know the obstacle of learning your school is facing and hopefully I can help. Feel free to send it my way on Facebook as well or via Twitter @MarkClementsEdu using #Edunators. Need more Edunating content? Check out the links below!
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