Motivation and Teenagers

Motivating Teenage Girls in the Face of Peer Pressure

Pipher, Mary. “Reviving Ophelia” Ballantine Books: New York, 1994

Dr. Mary Pipher argues in her book, Reviving Ophelia, that teenage girls face extreme challenges in high school. Some are associated with larger psychological issues, but the one that is directly related to their school work is being too smart or not smart enough. While most students strive to understand the material and be the best in the class, if you are actually that top student, then you become an outcast. If you are the lowest student, then you also may become an outcast. Therefore, teenage girls often rebel in order to achieve the acceptance they crave from their peers. To combine the “too smart” or “too dumb” stigmas to a teenage girl in addition to the emotions and hormones of adolescents makes the teachers job even more difficult to educate his or her students.
To be “too smart” or even not smart enough can have devastating effects on a teenage girl’s motivation in school. If she is teased for understanding the material, then she begins to make mistakes on purpose, come late to class, forget supplies, and overall begins to drop her grade. To be cool and fit in is a priority for most teenage girls. Nobody wants to look stupid next to the smart girl, so they don’t befriend her. Instead of working toward a future goal like college, the teenage girl will accept the poor grades in order to be in the popular crowd. Dr. Pipher received dozens of female patients who actually gave up in order to be popular.
On the other hand, girls are also teased for not being smart enough. If you ask the simple questions, can’t pronounce words when reading aloud, and never receive good grades on report cards, then you are forced to hear snickering from your classmates and teased about how “dumb” you are. With this scenario as well, the girl’s motivation is low. She gives up. Maybe she decides to be a rebel and stops coming to class. She may even come and just disrupt every class by cracking jokes and making a scene that stops your teaching.
With either scenario, a teenage girl needs to fit in. Dr. Pipher suggested to many of her female students to begin writing three things they’re proud of each day so that the feeling of accomplishment and needs for success are inherent in the student. This way, she creates an internal motivation and the outside influences won’t matter as much. Grades are not as much of a priority as friends are to most teenage girls. It is the responsibility of the teacher then to ensure that every student feels appreciated so that no “smart girl” stands out above the rest and that no student who is struggling is given the chance to be picked on by her classmates.

Assigment #3 Adolescents, Reading Comp & Strategies

Sources

Beers, Kyleen. "When Kids Can't Read, What Teachers Can Do"

Willingham, Daniel T. "The Usefulness of Brief Instruction in Reading Comp Strategies" American Educator winter 2006-2007


Finding the path to literacy comprehension and reading strategies seem to be the constant discourse among teachers, theorists, researchers and those of the educational community. However we as teachers struggle daily to solve the literacy and comp skills that is ever lacking in the majority of our students. As a result, schools across America, in particular high needs schools like mine, have adopted programs such as Ramp-Up, America's Choice and Springboard in order to boost the literacy and fluency of our students. In response to the readings I chose for this blog, I would like to address the topic of whether these strategies actually work, and if so how useful they actually are in classroom.

In the Kyleen Beers Book, she tackles literacy issues that she encountered as a first year teacher through modes of motivation and reinforcement strategies. Her strategies offer strategies that deal with Vocabulary skills, Comprehension, Fluency, Word Recognition, and Motivation in order to address the main issue of illiteracy. What is great about this book is that Beers offers reproducible materials and graphic organizers that can be used with her suggested activities such as "say something" "think-alouds" "double entry journals" and "signal words." The best part of these strategies is that they build the confidence through motivation and positive reinforcement, which is something that I employ in my classes. I have adapted Beers' theories in my classroom by assigning intensive vocabulary skills, (4 words a day/ 16 per week) where it is mandatory for some words to be used in writing assignments, oral assignments and reading assignments. I use an incentive chart to reflect their progress, and motivate the usage of certain words. Also I reinforce these words as replacements to slang in order for them to feel comfortable and confident when communicating with adults in workplace. This strategy also aids their fluency and command of the language.

Daniel Willingham's article in the American Educator, in my opinion, supports the usage of these strategies because he argues that reading comp overlaps directly with the spoken language. Studies show that listening comp contributes to reading comp abilities because the ability to decode words and ideas fluently correlates to the decoding process required in literacy abilities. Listeners and speakers monitor others' communicating styles, hence, the way one is spoken to is the way he or she will likely communicate. This contributes to the "African American dialects" that we encounter, and the persistence of the usage of slang in our classrooms. Furthermore Willingham gives evidence of the effectiveness and ineffectiveness of reading strategies. Multiple strategy instruction, (predictions, summaries, questions)comp monitoring, Graphic organizers, Q&A's, and Cooperative learning and all strategies designed to encourage students to relates sentences to echo her are found to be effective.


I know there is a lot of info here, but the topic was very broad, and I hope this is fodder for an exciting discussion!
Sumana ;-)

First Assignment

1. What content area are you teaching? Why are you teaching this subject?
I teach Social Studies. Social Studies was always my favorite class through grade school. I love the opportunity to talk directly about social issues as they relate to geography and history. I am currently teaching 7th grade geography and I am trying to help the students build some sort of basis of geographic/social studies knowledge, so that they may go on to look at more complex issues. I personally feel I would rather be working with students at a higher grade level, though there are some rewarding moments in the 7th grade classroom.

2. What have you noticed about the students you are teaching this year? Do they have particular problems with reading or writing? What are their strengths?

The literacy skill spectrum runs the gamut among my students. I'd say about an average of 5 out of 25 are on grade level or above. Perhaps another 5 are not far behind that. The next 10 are 2-3 levels behind. And then the bottom 5 are even further back. That is just a rough estimate, but in my workings with students, it is clear that the literacy skill spectrum is incredibly stratified. This creates quite a problem when trying to do book work. There are often 1-3 students in each class that are not much further along than sounding out words - what to do with these students?

My solution in my Geography classes has been to draw up questions for the book in a worksheet format that they can work on (the questions range from short answer to defining terms to drawing pictures). We then go over the worksheet the next class so that those who cannot read well enough to complete the worksheet are exposed to the information auditorily.

3. What do you most want to learn in this course?

I'd like to learn about some strategies for teaching reading/writing to a group that is so stratified in term of literacy skill level. Perhaps teaching reading/writing skills with the use of a textbook (gearing lessons around the textbook) would be beneficial as well since that is the main material I have for sharing knowledge with my geography students.

Chapter One Response (Double Entry Journal)

FACT OPINION

-Starts with a heartwarming story about a teacher whose "basic"

students out perform her advanced students by using reading/literacy

techniques

This story sounds like total crap.

-Mentions that teachers have an "addiction to coverage"

I totally agree with this. The administration and

DCPS and No Child Left Behind ensure that this

addiction will no be cured any time soon. Most

teachers are paranoid about not doing what they

are "supposed to." I admit I feel the pressure, too.

-The text talks about how texts will not necessarily be organized

well, or unbiased. But proper planning and strategies can still put

them to use

In my opinion, using DC textbooks are like handing

college textbooks to 6th graders. I find it better not to use

them at all. In my opinion teachers should be supplied with

their personal copies of multiple texts and good copy machines.

-Active readers generate questions before they read a text

Yes! you can have kids do this but i feel there must be

some basic interest in the subject for students to do it on

their own.

-Students often dont comprehend what they read because

they are insensitive to whats important.

I feel this is most often due to students not finding

the passage relevant.

-Engaged readers enjoy the opportunity for open forum discussion

I didn't in high school.

-Independence comes from practice

We need to bring in to class more Rolling Stone, Maxim,

Sports Illstrated, and those trashy sex novels the kids

like to read. They need the practice so much.

-Independence happens by design, not chance

I'll buy that

-Independence can be acheive in groups

This, I'm not sure I buy

-What it means to be literate

I'm not sure I understand this section. It sounds

like a lot of semantics.

-Some Expressivist Pedagogies teach students to view

themselves and others in very naive ways, ways that rarely

move them to social action.

I agree that studenst view themselves and others naively

however, I'm not sure of the cause. I'm pretty sure I was

the same way in high school, and my teachers were pretty

great.

-Comprehension fix-up strategies: moving forward and back

in the text, making mental images, contrasting new ideas with

previous experience.

Doesnt all this come with caring about what you're reading?

-"Not every child has an equal talent or an equal ability or equal

motivation, but children have the equal right to develop their talent,

their ability, and their motivation."- JFK

I LOVE THIS QUOTE!

--MATT HALLAHAN

First Assignment... ummm

no really I'm not doing this the night before class two... I wrote it ages ago and am just pasting it in. :-)

1. What content area are you teaching? Why are you teaching this subject?

I teach physics and chemistry. I love them, and I want somehow to make relevant, not the content and lessons of either, but the lessons I learned while wrestling with these subjects for the past few years. The latter confusingly worded statement is a big mushy romantic goal and comes with the bittersweet side effect of revealing that my first sentence is to a great deal a lie... In reality, I teach math and literacy more than physics or chemistry.

2. What have you noticed about the students you are teaching this year? Do they have particular problems with reading or writing? What are their strengths?

They seem to have had little experience with core couses like math, science or reading that actually might inspire them to view any of those subjects are something more than what they have to do to satisfy somebody in charge.

I do believe they have trouble with both reading and writing. From the point of view of a physicist, the thing I find most troubling is that they don't seem to be aware of the need to form and clearly communicate a hierarchy of ideas. Another way of saying this is that they seem to approach the concept of the outline much like they approach showing their work on a math problem--why do it yourself if you don't have to; why spend time looking for the big ideas or structure of what somebody else wrote if it's already written; why think you have to if you're not being forced to do it in english (math) class.

As for strengths, they are very good at expressing that they have an opinion. Despite not feeling confident in writing essays or complete sentences, they have none of the fear I remember having about speaking my mind. They have a confidence, passion and expressiveness about their opinions that would put most talk radio shows to shame (and perhaps do so without anyone noticing the lack of coherent structure!).

3. What do you most want to learn in this course?

I want to learn how to identify where my students are at in:
--the terminology of the people who require me to focus on reading across the curriculum
--the language of my fellow teachers
--the lingo of my students...
When I know where the students are and can communicate in all those languages, I hope to translate my own thoughts into each language and not have to be so darned wordy about it.

See, in the end, I find that writing as a form or communication is more important to me than most of the specific content pasted to my classroom wall. I want my students to understand that, harshly said, nobody cares what they know unless they can communicate it... more kindly and truthfully said: very few people have the time to understand what they are trying to communicate when they do it in the mode they are trying to use. I believe this, feel this, want to help them learn this... but honestly don't feel like I have the words or way to connect to them and then connect them to my expectations or those of the other two groups I mentioned above.

And after all my longwindedness and all this attempt at translation, are they still listening? Will they believe when I try to teach them to do as I say and not as I have just done in this ramble?

First Assignment

1. What content area are you teaching? Why are you teaching this subject?

I am teaching seventh grade mathematics. I am teaching this because there was no further need for psychics teachers, my background in math is sufficient to teach this, and I planned on getting dual certification eventually anyways.

2. What have you noticed about the students you are teaching this year? Do they have particular problems with reading or writing? What are their strengths?

I have noticed that many of my students refuse to try to read and answer questions in class. This is a big problem because the books I am supposed to use are the "Connected Mathematics" books which are based upon the "reading throughout the curriculum" idea. I think that the strength of my students is that once they understand something, they are happy to use it in problems and will do work.

3. What do you most want to learn in this course?

Practical strategies that I can use to get the students to use and learn from the "Connected Mathematics" books.

ONE

1. What content area are you teaching? Why are you teaching this subject?
I am teaching math. I am teaching math because I have a major in math.

2. What have you noticed about the students you are teaching this year? Do they have particular problems with reading or writing? What are their strengths?
My students have problems with reading and writing. Most of them can read fine if you ask them to, however many cannot comprehend what they read. This is compounded with the fact that most of them don't understand the mathmatical concepts that are being or will need to be applied. I have not noticed any strengths except that they cannot stop talking, so they obviously have a lot to say.

3. What do you most want to learn in this course?
I want to learn how to give a writing assignment to my class and ensure that they take it seriously even though its math class and dang Mr Hallahan, you gonna make us write in math class? shit.

Post 1

1. I am teaching math (Algebra 1 & Geometry) @ Cardozo SHS. I am teaching math because I like it and I have a major in mathematics.

2. I am teaching repeater algebra, most my algebra students have failed algebra at least twice, and have also failing marks in the other core classes (English, Social Studies, language). My Algebra students are all below basic to basic in reading, writting, and mathematics. Even though we do word problems and springboard (which is crap) all the time my students almost always leave word problem and explaination problems blank of my tests. My geometry students are all at least basic in reading and writting, but struggled when it came to writting proofs and the comprehenson of theorems.

3. In this course I want to learn what my job is in terms of teaching reading and writting skills in a math classroom, and how to incorporate those teaching in my classroom with out taking away from the math. Honestly I had a hard enough time getting through the math material and I don't feel like I have time to stop and teach the students how to read or write when I only get one semester to teach them an entire math class.

1. What content area are you teaching? Why are you teaching this subject?
I teach math (Algebra II) at Coolidge High School. I have a masters degree in astrophysics, which is basically applied physics, which is basically applied math. And, since the district needed more math teachers than physics teachers, I'm doing math instead.

2. What have you noticed about the students you are teaching this year? Do they have particular problems with reading or writing? What are their strengths?
The biggest reading problem in my class is, hands-down, not reading the directions. They are definitely literate, and we've been working a lot on verbalizing mathematical concepts. Since we don't really use the textbook, they don't have the ability to simply look up and regurgitate definitions straight from the glossary. Instead, I have them express definitions in their own words. We also do a lot of process-writing (writing down the steps that they take to solve a problem).

3. What do you most want to learn in this course?
I'd like to learn how to best tie together math and reading, and to help students who are both confident in math to succeed in reading and those confident in reading to succeed in math.

My 1st Assignment...Finally!

Ok This is my 2nd attempt to post this blog! ;-p

1. What content area are you teaching? Why are you teaching this subject? My Major was English Lang and Lit, and Multicultural WMST at UMD.... Now I am Happily teaching English 3 (11th grade) and Multicultural Literature in Woodson SHS. I will be teaching Journalism next semester and I have no idea why because I have never taken a journalism course in my life!

2. What have you noticed about the students you are teaching this year? Do they have particular problems with reading or writing? What are their strengths? My students have suprised me in the way that most of them are interested in social issues like the war or voting, poverty, racism and sexism. However when it comes to writing or communicating what they want to say, they cannot articulate it, so I have started giving them vocabulary words to replace the slang that they take for granted as actual words. I have a problem with them writing the way they speak which is coloquially. The reading levels are very low in the majority of students, but they all love to read aloud and do "public speaking" assignments like debates and presentations.

3. What do you most want to learn in this course?How do I make these students better writers and readers so that I can prepare them for the SATs and College. about a third of my students are seniors and I fear that their lack writing and reading skills will be a detriment in college. They understand why it is important to improve their skills, but how do I help them improve, while keeping them all interested in the lessons?...see you all later today!

assignment #1

1. What content area are you teaching? Why are you teaching this subject?

I teach social studies (World History, World Geography, and DC History). I majored in Government in undergrad. Plus, I think social studies opens up the doors to discuss critical issues that are relevant to content and to students' lives.

2. What have you noticed about the students you are teaching this year? Do they have particular problems with reading or writing? What are their strengths?

Vocabulary is one particular obstacle. Also, very little original synthesis of content is evidenced in their writing, and they copy too much stuff verbatim. I believe they can be more committed to their work if given a great deal of structure. When given some writing prompts directed at their personal experiences, they are generally eager to write and discuss their reflections.

3. What do you most want to learn in this course?

I assigned a couple of essays this past semester but had only about a quarter or less of my students turned them in. While there are probably a dozen reasons why this is so, I want to be sure that I did everything I could to walk them through the process. Also, I'd like to know how to be more effective in teaching vocab.

First Blog Post

I am a math teacher at McKinley Tech. I teach math because there is such a high need. I have enough credits to teach other subjects but DCTF needed math teachers. So here I am. I love math, love school, so it doesn't really matter.
I have noticed that my students require more motivation than I anticipated. I had the disillusionment that grades were adequate motivators, but less than half of the kids seem to truly care about there grades. I have to keep inventing new ways to keep them motivated. I think the biggest strength I have with my students compared to many of my fellows is that my students do come to school. It makes it 10 times easier to teach to a consistent audience, even if many of them have 5-6 grade math skills.
I have taken content area classes before so I'm not sure what I want to learn in this class. I guess I will just see what is there. It would have been nice to know what book was suggested/required for this course. There has been nothing posted at the bookstore, and no syllabus.
I hope that means there will be no tests too :)

1) I teach 11th grade AP English. I have an undergrad degree in English Lit.

2) I've noticed that my students' reading and writing issues are quite varied, and I wish I was better at differentiating my lessons. For most of the ELL students, the main issue is sentence structure, or putting their ideas into English and make sense. For the non-ELLs their main issues are making a coherent argument and general grammar.

For reading, I'm still having a hard time figuring out when students don't understand the reading assignment, how soon are they giving up? What can I do to get them to stick with a passage longer to see if with practice they can "get it." We just read "Their Eyes Were Watching God," and once students decided that they couldn't understand the dialect, it was almost impossible to bring them back.

My students' main strength is that most of them will at least try an assignment before determining that it's too hard.

3) I'd like to learn how to get through to my students more often. There are many days when I'm sure how much the class is retaining.

1) I teach math to both 7th and 8th graders. I love math and I decided that I wanted to help students learn to love math the same way I do.

2) My students have a very hard time with attention and effort. If they come across a word or problem that they struggle with they immediately give up and generally begin acting up in class. Most of them have a very hard time with reading comprehension. They can read a problem but then they have no idea what information was given or what they are supposed to do. However, if I read the same words out loud to them they understand it just fine.

As far as strengths go, many of my students are very smart when they decide to put their mind to it. If I can get them to want to do the math they learn it well and succeed. This is not easy to do. They are also very good at making noise and distractions for the class and getting me off topic.

3) I want to learn how to teach the students to read a problem and get information from the text and apply this to the math that they know to solve the problem. I want to learn how to teach reading comprehension in my math class.

First Assignment

1. I am teaching math (Algebra I). I am teaching math because I am a nerd and I like math, and also because I have a minor in math.

2. My students are mostly limited English proficient (ESL), so the first thing that I noticed was their trouble reading and writing in English. But as the year has progressed, I have noticed (mostly through my interception of their notes to each other) that most of them also have trouble reading and writing in their first language.

It is difficult to think of a strength of theirs... I would say that they are willing to try to read and write, which is the first step. They are good at circling words that they don't know.

3. I want to learn:
- strategies to teach vocabulary to students
- how to help students read and understand directions for problems
- how to use reading and writing to help students understand content (math in particular)
- how to help students comprehend what they read (for word problems etc)

See you Tuesday!
-Tamarah Shuer

First Assignment

1. What content area are you teaching? Why are you teaching this subject?
I teach English to 6th and 7th graders at Kramer MS in Anacostia. I teach English because I have an undergraduate degree in English.

2. What have you noticed about the students you are teaching this year? Do they have particular problems with reading or writing? What are their strengths?
Writing Weakness: My students write the way they speak. They know how to write a sentence, but struggle to string several together into a paragraph. They do not always know when to end one sentence and start a new one.
Reading Weakness: My students have a hard time paying attention when other students read. But if I say they can read silently to themselves, more than half the class will immediately start goofing off.

3. What do you most want to learn in this course?
How to engage my students in reading during class. How to systematically improve their writing.

Welcome to the Class Blog!

Hi, this is your geeky professor Jill, practicing a little electronic literacy since I preach it. On this blog, we'll share our reading responses and feedback on discussions in class.
For the first assignment, I'd like you to register on blogger if you haven't already, subscribe to this blog in your aggregator and post a paragraph about you and your students. Please answer these questions in your posting:

1. What content area are you teaching? Why are you teaching this subject?

2. What have you noticed about the students you are teaching this year? Do they have particular problems with reading or writing? What are their strengths?

3. What do you most want to learn in this course?