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Motivating reluctant or struggling learners at year’s end

Filed Under motivating students 

Link to Make Beliefs Comix here. Create your own.  it’s fun.

Here we are again almost at semester’s end and some students haven’t submitted all the requisite assignments. What else is new!

Getting those assignments in drives me crazy! It’s not that students haven’t started them. I know they’ve started them. I’ve seen the kids working on them. They just haven’t completed them so they don’t hand them in.

I always encourage students to hand in whatever they’ve done so they can get some marks. I tell them some marks are better than no marks. Usually when a student hands something in not completed, I tell them they’ve made a good start, and if they just spent a bit more time right now in class they could complete more of the assignment and get a better mark. I also tell them I’m always looking for ways to give them more marks, but they have to help me out by handing something in for me to mark.

I find that approach usually very successful. Most kids want good marks even if they don’t dare to say it. But, there are always some kids who don’t care about high marks. They just want to pass. They tell me they’ve “aced’ a course if they get 50%. I respect that and tell those kids what they need to do to just to get 60%. I tell them they need a cushion of 10%, just in case. You never know. They understand that.

This was all on my mind when Kevin’s invitation to “My Day in a Comic” arrived in my in box. I’ve been taking part for a while now in Kevin’s invitation to sum up my week in a sentence, in six words, in a poem (a special favourite of mine) in Voice Thread to mention a few formats.

When I saw this weeks invitation, I thought “My Day in a Comic! I can do that. A teacher’s life has many moments in it that could be material for a comic. I created the comic you see above and used it in my class blog as a gentle reminder to kids to hand in their work. Then, I had them create their own comics. They enjoyed doing that- lots of enthusiasm and excitement .

I really look forward to accepting the invitation to reflect each week. It encourages me to stop and think about my week and what went on and then to sum it up in a very creative way. I also really look forward to reading what other people have to say about their lives and circumstances. It’s amazing how similar our lives are even though we may live in different countries or even different continents.

I encourage you to accept next week’s invitation. Nancy is hosting it so go to Nancy’s blog and read all about. I hope to see you there.

 
icon for podpress  Motivating reluctant or strugling learners at year's end [3:59m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (605)

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Comments

4 Responses to “Motivating reluctant or struggling learners at year’s end”

  1. tracy on June 3rd, 2008 8:12 am

    I like your comic, Elona! I can definitely relate, as will some of my students I am sure.

    I followed the link to your class blog where I found a link to the site where you made the comic. Guess what my class will be doing tomorrow?
    :)

    Thanks again for a great resource!
    Tracy

  2. Elona Hartjes on June 3rd, 2008 9:54 am

    Tracy,
    Your students will love creating comics.

    I didn’t realize that the link to make beliefs comix wasn’t working on this page.

    I’ll repair that right now, but glad you went to class blog and accessed the link there.

    I hope to publish some of the students comics.
    Check the class blog.

  3. tracy on June 3rd, 2008 6:15 pm

    I’m not sure if it was on this page or not. I like seeing how you use the things you write about here on your class blog.

    I’m looking forward to seeing the student comics!

  4. Elona Hartjes on June 3rd, 2008 8:07 pm

    Tracy,
    I posted the kids comic strips in the class blog http://www.mrshartjes1.edublogs.org but the text isn’t to clear. I createda Powerpoint presentation then uploaded it to Slideshare and then embedded into the blog. The text quality is not good. I’ll have to repost the comic strips using Snagit.

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