Student Meetings

Instead of lunch and planning periods this week, I've been holding one on one meetings with some of my 8th-grade students.  So far, I've met with seven students (and a mom).  I have four meetings scheduled for next week.  No one is in trouble.  No one has done anything wrong.  These meetings are about preparing for tests.  

At GRACE, the 8th-grade team understands that our responsibility is to meet kids where they are and get them ready for where they are going.  This is, of course, true for teachers of every grade.  The first grade team is preparing kids for second grade.  But there is something that most students and parents understand about the eighth grade - high school is next.  The curriculum in 8th grade assumes a fair amount of foundational knowledge, and it is now time to learn analytical skills.  Students are no longer only learning the name of a family on the periodic table; they need to know how to use the periodic table to calculate how many neutrons are in the atom of an element in that family and how many valence electrons it has.  This requires more than the flashcards that they have been so dutifully making all these years.  It means that note-taking can't mean copying what the teacher projects from their PowerPoint presentation.  It means dropping most of the little tricks our older siblings have passed down (like choosing all of the above because it's only a choice if it's right - I will break them of this belief).

I spend a fair amount of classtime talking to them about why retrieval is superior to rereading and how to prepare for different levels of thinking-level questions.  I try to prepare them for the fact that they will have to change some of the habits that have led to their prior success, but they often just don't believe me.  Until it is real, I'm just saying stuff teachers say. Then, a student who is accustomed to As makes a B- or a C+ and they want to know what they can do.  While they mean extra credit, I bring them in and talk to them about how they currently study and how they might modify that to be more successful with tests that inlcude higher level thinking.  I divide it into three sections of advice - in class, studying, and test taking.  Let me share some of that with you.

In Class -  I work in a one to one laptop school, so there are plenty of ways to be distracted, but that isn't new.  Students have always found things to distract them in class.  I watched a student read her pencil once just to avoid doing what she should have been doing.  When I speak students about learning, we start there.  First, if your computer is distracting you, feel free to take your notes by hand.  

Then we talk about notes.  Most students fall into one of two extremes - they either write down almost nothing or they attempt to write down everything.  Neither of those is conducive to good learning.  Note taking involves paying close attention and making decisions about what is important to write down, which is not the same for every student.  In a class like mine, where the book is very closely aligned with what we are doing in class, it may be better to think of notes as a map, pointing to the information you need to study and supplementing with a few things from class.  Students have grown accustomed to copying the power point presentation and are surprised when I say, "Oh, that's just to remind me of what to talk about next or to give you a visual aid.  Unless I tell you that you need to copy a slide, you probably don't need to."  (There is a technique I'm afraid to experiment with called "retrieve taking."  In this technique, students to not write anything down during the class period.  You give them five minute at the end to write down everything they can remember.  I want to try it, but I'm a little afraid that I would have a hard time justifying it if it didn't work.). 

We also talk about asking and answering questions as a way of remaining engaged rather than just letting the class wash over you.

Studying - This is the longest part of the conversation and the one with the most research based support.  I start by asking them what they currently do to study.  By far, the most common answer I get is, "I look over my notes."  After asking them what they mean by that, it is clear they do not know that study is a verb.  They are re-reading notes that don't accurately represent what they did in class and hoping that will be enough to have it stuck in their heads.  We talk about why that is not helpful for their memory.  I ask them if they have ever memorized lines for a play; you don't learn your lines by reading the play again.  You learn them by trying to remembre them, crashing and burning, and trying again.  We talk about flashcards and making a list of questions for yourself and brain dumps a number of other retrieval strategies.  

For higher level thinking questions, flashcards may not be your best tool, so we talk about that too.  How might you "think outside the book" and prepare for questions that require using the knowledge they have gained from their flashcards.  How might you write yourself a question that is similar to one we have gone over in class?  What skills might you need to employ that would help?  This, again, requires that you have been engaged in class.  Learning is a complex activity, and it requires your full attention.  

Test Taking - About three-fourths of the students I meet with identify themselves as people with test anxiety.  I don't say identify themselves as a way of criticizing them; I think we all have at least a little bit of test anxiety, and it is not really a diagnosable condition.  We talk a little about taking the time to breath or pray or count to ten or whatever it takes to calm you rather than trying to ignore your feelings and power through.  And then I give them what I think is a simple but powerful piece of advice.  Cover up your test with a piece of paper.  It keeps you from seeing how much you have left to do and allows you to focus on the question you are currently on.  Most students with anxiety are also prone to talking themselves into all of the choices, so I tell them to cover the choices with the paper, read the question and think of the answer in their mind first; then just go look for that answer.  The only questions that doesn't work for are ones where the answer is "all of the above," but that's usually only one or two per test.  It's worth the trade.  These students are also generally prone to changing their answers while going over their test after they finish.  All of the research I've read says this is a bad idea.  I can't remember the exact number, but it was much more likely that students who have prepared well would change from a right answer to a wrong answer (or from one wrong answer to a different wrong answer).  It is rare that they change from a wrong answer to a right one.  If you have prepared well, trust yourself.

I want my students to be successful in all of their subjects, not just mine.  None of this advice is specific to my class or to the 8th grade.  If they actually absorb this, it should serve them well for years.