What could I do differently to engage students in realising the value of stuck?
In this section we explore a range of ideas, activities, ways to display, and things to say about being stuck. The ideas aim to deepen your learning friendly classroom culture, helping to support and strengthen your students’ relationship with stuckness; how to enjoy it; what to do about it; how to overcome it, when to give up on it.
Much of being able to deal with being stuck involves your feelings; your emotional responses to learning. Being emotionally robust is a pre-requisite for powerful learning. Hence making sure students actually become stuck and coaching them to get unstuck is one small, but essential, way of moulding them as powerful lifelong learners.
The ideas to practise are grouped in two ways;
In section 2 (this section)
The four phases of learner behaviour ( we have left ’embodies’ out):
- Lacks (grey) ‘I can’t. I won’t’, can be a reluctant or fearful learner
- Receives ( purple) ‘Tell me’. ‘Show me’, where their tendency is to do as they are told.
- Responds ( blue) I’ll try. where they act more independently
- Values ( green ) I see why. where they come to value the behaviour
- Organises ( yellow) I make sure I do.where they organise themselves to use the behaviour effectively
This grouping will enable you to look at all the ideas linked to a phase of development
In section 3 (The culture sort)
The four shifts in teacher behaviour:
- how you relate to students
- how you talk to students
- how you construct learning opportunities
- how you celebrate learning
This grouping will enable you to look at one type of teacher behaviour shift across all student development phases. Basically it shows the subtle behaviour changes you will need to make in order to build your students’ behaviours.
Most of the ideas to practise are not phase-specific and can be used, or readily be adapted for use, with students of any age. Have a rummage through the sections to see what you can find. As you do, keep in mind what your students do now when they are ‘stuck’. Think about, what you want them to be able to do that they can’t or don’t do now?
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