Meggin’s Current Articles

Teachers – Tactics to Engage the ‘Learning Combatant’ – Reaching and Teaching Difficult Students

17th May, 2009 - Posted by Meggin - No Comments

All kinds of students show up in our classrooms. There are students you might classify as eager learners. Others as avid learners. Some are reluctant learners. You might have students who are challenging to teach. And then…there are the students who Dr. Roni Jo Draper and I classified as "learning combatant," i.e., they fight every attempt to reach and teach them. If you want to reach and teach these students, here are some suggestions to keep in mind:

• Communicate clear and appropriate expectations. Communicate these expectations over and over and over.
• Project enthusiasm for learning and learning activities. If you’re not excited, then why would anyone else be?
• Set clear purposes for learning and guide students to set their own purposes for learning. You have to be clear first and then support students as they gain clarity and direction.
• Address the variety of learning styles at-risk learners bring to the classroom. It means you have to learn a great deal about your learning combatant students (along with all your others, too!) No one said teaching was easy, and it’s not!
• Use multi-sensory experiences in instruction. Keep trying different modalities to find a way to engage your learning combatant ‘learners.’
• Provide students with the opportunity to work in cooperative groups. Be mindful about the groups you form. And know that not everyone wants to work in a group, so allow work alone, too.
• Provide students choice from among proper learning alternatives. Choices (although not too many) give students a sense that they aren’t being forced do do something. When they’re already combatant, trying to force anything just increases their resistance.
• Incorporate game-like features in the lesson. There’s no need to go overboard, but minor changes give students a sense of fun.
• Relate new information to previously learned information. Find a way of making a connection to students’ knowledge and experience. You want them to have a sense of relevance.
• Use a variety of questions to assess learners’ progress. There is not just ONE type of assessment. Talk to your learning combatant students, have them write for you, or use other means and methodologies.
• Provide learners with an opportunity to assimilate information. It takes time to learn. Allow that rather than assuming that new skills and knowledge are instantly accessible.
• Teach students goal setting strategies. Start small but don’t stay small. That’s often a mistake we make with young people who are struggling. We keep their sights too low.
• Provide students opportunities to assess their own learning and behaviors. Learning combatant students know better than anyone else how they are behaving…let them give you some insight.
• Offer rewards for good and improved performance. Be wary of this one, however, if you need to get some movement toward learning, you may choose to employ some type of reward system.

And have patience…remember, these students didn’t arrive on the earth already learning combatant. They have learned (ironically enough) to be learning combatant. It will take time, effort, energy, and collaboration with other professionals to bring these students back around to learning. And it’s worth the effort.

And I invite you to access the scores of free resources that you can use to support learning in your classroom.

Go to:  http://www.OwningWordsforLiteracy.com – and you can click on the Downloads tab.

To get numerous articles with teaching tips (for free), just go to:

http://www.ArticlesforTeachers.com – and see what’s there for you to use in your classroom.

(c) 2009 by Meggin McIntosh, Ph.D., "The Ph.D. of Productivity"(tm). Through her company, Emphasis on Excellence, Inc., Meggin McIntosh changes what people know, feel, dream, and do. Sound interesting? It is!