When a student recognizes his or her own ignorance and sees work as the way to overcome it, commitment grows. If the teacher tests often and tests widely, the teacher can say, you are weak in this area, and here is our plan for overcoming your weakness. The student, seeing his or her own ignorance, has a purpose for doing work. When the student is retested at the end of a period of independent work, he or she can see improvement.
When students are not naturally motivated, there are things that a teacher can do to obtain student commitment. The first question for a teacher to ask is, of course, is this work appropriate and not too difficult. Next, the teacher can give recognition to work accomplished. Putting a sticker on a child's completed work is still a welcomed sign of recognition. A gold star gives recognition on a checklist. An "A" at the top of a paper gives satisfaction (although anything less than an "A" does not). Positive recognition of a student's work, then, is basic to obtaining his or her commitment to it.
Record keeping, also, is basic to student commitment, because the student can see progress in the record. The student in a workbook or kit needs to keep a checklist, most likely in a three-ring binder, listing the work in the workbook or kit and showing checks for work completed. Sometimes, teachers make a wall chart with students' names and work undertaken; however, such a chart, put up for all to see, can be a daunting experience for the slow student, who sees very little on the chart next to his or her name compared with those galloping along.
5. Obtaining Student Commitment to Independent Work
First and foremost among learning materials for the independent learner are, of course, trade books and reference books. The wealth of offerings in all academic fields is staggering. The student who is a dedicated reader can find a great deal of interesting material, both fiction and nonfiction. The teacher looking for curriculum-relevant materials can take home an armload of books from the library.
However, anyone accompanying a class of students on a visit to the library will notice much aimless wandering among some students. It's as if there were too much offered, as if the offerings were overwhelming. From all this wealth some students can't find a single book they want. There are several reasons for this disappointing fact. First, the books that children look into are often too difficult for them. Poor readers in elementary schools shy away from "baby books" out of shame - they would rather walk away with nothing than have other children notice their weakness. Second, their interests are not well defined - they look here and there, not knowing what section of the library they want. The children interested in sports or animals or history are in those sections finding books, while the wanderers see so much and at the same time see nothing. Third, they have a poor understanding of library organization - they are in the fiction section when they should be in nonfiction or vice-versa.
Librarians and teachers, well aware of these problems, respond in several ways. Many of them construct grade-by-grade reading lists and then establish book clubs so that children receive credit for the listed books that they have read. While still in the classroom, teachers meet with students to set up objectives for a library visit so that even the wanderers have a purpose for the visit.
Several publishers, too, have come up with book lists. Learning Links, Houghton Mifflin, DC Heath, Harcourt Brace, and Dandy Lion, among others, offer sets of children's literature by grade level. These and other publishers also offer sets of theme-related trade books. Houghton Mifflin, for example, offers sets of mathematics-related trade books by grade level. Learning Links offers sets of graded books related to many topics: adventure, adult friends, animals, children as victims, city tales, coming of age, coping with divorce, country tales, and so on through survival and young classics; other sets of trade books from Learning Links are related to social studies, such as exploring ancient civilizations, immigrating to America, remembering the Holocaust, and saving our planet, among others. DC Heath offers sets of books by grade level. Royal Fireworks Press offers sets of Aesop's fables graded according to reading difficulty. ECS Learning Systems offers a set of trade books related to American history and another related to world history. The Harcourt Brace classroom collections are related by theme and author to their Student Anthologies.
Poor readers do better reading many easy books than reading one "challenging" book. If they are guided to the easy books and become enthused about reading, their reading abilities will grow. If they feel obliged to tackle the "challenging" book, they will become stuck; furthermore, their liking of reading will plummet, and the hope of their becoming lifelong readers will suffer a setback.
The enthusiastic, dedicated readers are never, as we all know, a classroom problem. They are eager to finish their assigned work so that they can get to the book waiting for them in their desk. They can then be seen absorbed in a world of history, science, sports, biography, humor, or fiction. Theirs is a great gift, which virtually everyone respects. As adults, they are the ones who can be seen on an airplane, bus, or subway transfixed by a book.
6. Providing for Student Management of Classroom Materials
Workbooks have often been criticized for being a mish-mash of lessons. A spelling workbook, for example, which is probably the most popular type of workbook, is often a mixture of spelling words, punctuation, grammar, and capitalization. It is no doubt true that not every student needs every exercise in a spelling workbook; however, individualization of instruction has not gotten (anywhere near) to the point where a student is working only on work that he or she needs. Many or most of the exercises in a student's workbook are probably useful. Workbooks are a marvelous invention and should not be readily dismissed. When students are properly placed in a good workbook, the workbook can keep them purposefully learning hour after hour. When students are working in a workbook, the teacher is free to work with other students.
Many of the learning materials referred to in the subject-matter lists (accessed from Chapter III ) are on blackline masters, that is, they are reproducible by the page. They can be copied in quantity and stored in folders, or they can be laminated as single copies. In any case, these kits must be organized and clearly labeled. One-time use of a kit is probably counterproductive because of management problems; a student who uses a kit should use the pages sequentially over a period of weeks or months. Records of a student's use of a kit must be kept, both by the teacher and by the student. The student manager of a kit must keep it orderly and stocked.
Because setting up a kit is time consuming, and keeping them stocked and in order is a problem, teachers should add kits slowly. They are wonderful only when well organized and purposefully used. A few kits in a classroom are often as many as a teacher can handle.
The kits to choose first are those that many students can use, such as creative writing kits, research project kits, or language skills kits. The kits for slow learners can come later. Also, it is best to choose kits that students can stick with for a period of weeks or months. The kits that students complete in a few days only add to the teacher's management problem.
7. Choosing Learning Materials for the Independent Learner
Novadays, there are thousands of available educational CD-ROM's and software programs ones that are curriculum related. However, there are many that a teacher might be interested in. One resource is the Children's Software Review, a database in America OnLine sponsored by HomePC magazine of more than 1,500 reviews of children's software. All product reviews are catalogued by title within an alphabetical index. Another resource is Superkids, available at
http://www.superkids.com
Still another review site on the Internet is
http://school.discovery.com/parents/reviewcorner/
Also available on the Internet is a comprehensive list of software - Children's Educational Software, categorized by grade level, available at
http://www.smartkidssoftware.com/grade.htm
There is a magazine called Children's Software Revue (note spelling). If you subscribe, you are authorized to see software reviews on the Internet.
When computers become more commonplace in classrooms, CD-ROM's and software will become more and more practical. With several computers available to a class, several students can use them; with workstations, the high cost of some software won't be such a drawback. As things now stand, with a limited number of computers in classroom or school, computers are soon overtaxed, and a school's or classroom's collection of available software is limited.
8. Using Internet for self-independent learning
There is such a wealth of information on the Internet that it must soon be a part of anyone's search for knowledge. At one time I was (mistakenly) diagnosed with a condition of excess iron in the blood called hemochromatosis. I wanted to learn as much as I could about the condition. My search, terminating (finally) with "medical articles," resulted in more than one hundred references to the condition. I selected three that seemed least esoteric and was able to download them for $1.50 apiece. Another time, I wanted to know the names of the full cast of the movie Pride and Prejudice with Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson. A search on the Internet gave me a list of all of the cast members. A search on almost any topic brings up an array of responses, which will grow as the Internet expands.
These searches do take time. The search for information about hemachromatosis took a couple of hours, and the search for the cast of Pride and Prejudice took at least three-quarters of an hour.
Practice with searching is necessary - the student can learn with practice to limit his or her searches so that Internet provides dozens instead of thousands of responses. www.altavista.com allows the user to surround a phrase with quotation marks, thus limiting the number of responses.
Before using the Internet, students will probably benefit from using a guide, such as Every Student's Guide to the Internet (Glencoe/McGraw Hill) or The Portable Learn the Net, found at www.learnthenet.com/english/index.html, which is the site, also, of on-line courses teaching use of the Internet.
The ACT Laboratory, through its Digital Education Network, has created InternetDEN, which offers online lessons that explain basic Internet tools and navigation: http://www.actden.com/
Most of the Internet's value to a student is the same as to an adult - providing information. However, there are some sites on the Internet specifically for students and children. Some of these are not as good as a book. Others, however, offer beautiful graphics, and still others are interactive.
The Internet is most valuable when the student has a purpose for using it. Without a clear purpose, a student can drown in a sea of trivia. Furthermore, in contrast with a book, magazine, or newspaper, on the Internet it is not easy to skim information, and so pulling information off the Internet can be less productive than getting information from a book, magazine, or newspaper.
Should classroom time be provided for gathering information from the Internet? In some cases, yes. However, the Internet can eat up much valuable classroom time. Certainly, it can serve as a supplement to classroom work when accessed from a student's home or from a school computer outside of classroom time.
Sending Independent-Study Work Home
How should a teacher respond to a student's request to work at home on independent-study materials? The teacher certainly doesn't want to stifle a student's interest; on the other hand, some students race through work so quickly that, instead of really learning, they are just covering ground. Furthermore, school materials that are safe in school are sometimes lost or damaged at home - "My dog chewed on it," the student says! Lastly, if the work requires checking, at a student's home the teacher is not at hand to check it. It is true that some parents are just as good at checking student work as the teacher, but others aren't. Then there is the student who does work at home and brings an armload of work to school for the teacher to check, expecting the teacher to spend an inordinate amount of precious class time doing so. For sure, the question of whether to send independent-study work home is not a simple one.
If the teacher does decide to allow independent-study materials to go home, the teacher must be particularly diligent to work with the student managers of kits and collections to be sure that they are keeping track of the materials. As any librarian knows, lost materials are a major headache. If possible, the teacher should keep a backup copy of the materials.
To those students who arrive at school with an armload of completed work, expecting the teacher to check it, the teacher should say, "Excellent! You have done a lot of work. Let's spot check it to see how conscientious you have been. If there are many mistakes, back you go to redo it."
Students who allow materials to be lost or damaged cannot be allowed to continue on their destructive path. On the other hand, their sentence shouldn't be forever. Once they commit to more responsible behavior, they should be given another chance.
Parents who are willing to work with their children are a godsend not only to their children but also to the teacher. The teacher provides the independent-study materials; the parents do the checking. However, sometimes parents are not knowledgeable enough to check their children's work, so the teacher must continue to spot check.
Navigate to Home Page "Students Can Learn On Their Own" - http://www.teacherneedhelp.com/ students/
[1] See for example, http://www.ets.org/testcoll/index.html
[2]See: ETS Test Collection Catalog" Oryx PressPub. Barcelona 1992 or http://ericir.syr.edu
[3]Excellent resources are now available for finding tests. Buros Mental Measurements Yearbook and Buros Tests in Print have for many years been an excellent resource, and now, in addition, there is the Internet: http://www.ets.org/testcoll/index.html