I enjoy fielding questions about Independent Work Time. This one comes from a teacher whose students “refuse to work” (cue scary music):
…I still haven’t been able to have an effective IWT time. The children just refuse to work independently. I can’t work small group with children in need of extra support. I have 24 reg. ed students and 4 mainstreamed children. I need to help them. When I let them go and have the Must Do/May Do, they sit and talk and play. They do absolutely nothing. I am extremely frustrated. I have NEVER in my entire teaching career had a class like this one.
First I would reframe the discussion about the classroom situation. While students are sometimes defiant, to suggest that a classroom of 29 students are all simultaneously defying a teacher’s directions seems statistically implausible.
Rather than saying the students are “refusing to work” independently, can we say that the students do not yet know how to work independently? The solution then lies in our control…it’s our job to teach them how to work independently.
I know that this teacher has listened to my Independent Work Time CD but somehow they missed a key point which is that you should not give student multiple must dos and may dos until they are able to complete a single must do independently within a limited (5-10 minute time period) while you monitor and take notes. This training period needs to last until students are able to complete the 5-10 minute single must do with about 80% success.
You must set up behavioral expectations before beginning the one must do and you must revisit those expectations at the conclusion of the work period to debrief how it went. I have not seen this class but I would doubt that there is not even a single student who is trying to do work. By recognizing the students who are working, good behavior will slowly begin to spread.
If it’s still going badly after this, then you need to take a look at what you’re assigning students to do and make sure that it is, in fact, work they can complete independently. I would also make sure that the work isn’t completely boring.
Your thoughts?
I agree with your point Mathew. I use learning centers in my grade 4 class throughout the year. You have to teach and model how kids are supposed to work independently, how it is done. This combo of socialization and productive work takes a while to develop. In the beginning of the year, I have lots of off task behavior since kids aren’t used to having 30-40 minutes working in a small group on a specific assignment and in which a teacher is wandering the rooms checking in periodically with all groups, sometimes getting the whole class attention for an announcement. After a month or so, understanding improves, and then after two months we are pretty well in synch with learning centers and independent work. The assigned work is important – I have kids do a combination of compute work, social studies, literacy, and math – sometimes it’s an activity building or creating something, sometimes it’s a problem set, sometimes it’s a review, sometimes it’s an intro to something they’ve never seen before, and so forth. Now in the last part of the year, learning centers almost run themselves, kids know the schedule, and they know that off task behavior will cause them to be removed from the interactive experience of working with their peers. Most importantly, they are having the opportunity to converse, share, and learn how to function in a learning group. Learning theory here: situated cognition, distributed knowledge.
Dear Matthew,
Great post. I agree with the notion that independent work ethic comes with modelling and practice. And a quick analysis of the tasks being set. Are they too hard/easy/boring/obscure/irrelevant etc?
In terms of being willing to address the following:
‘I would also make sure that the work isn’t completely boring.’ have the students been consulted about the content or design task required? To increase the likelihood of student engagement, it is often a good idea if the students have some opportunities to negotiate what these tasks are and how they will be completed.
I definately agree that we need to provide students with work that is not just busy work during downtime or needs to follow the standards that we have been set to follow. Sometimes it seems hard to find activities for students to be actively engaged in during group work. I too struggled with a similar situation of the students not working while in small groups and the activities taking much longer than they should have because of this. We had 25 students with four who were way below the level of a 1st grade student, but were able to basically JUST pass by. I wanted to do something different with the students during group work, but wanted this same attitude to be transferred to regular whole group work. I decided to move the students desks around where the above average working students were specifically next to the four lower level. I understand that in the classroom that was discussed in the blog it may not have been the same case but this is what worked for me. I put a higher level child next to the lower level without letting them know or making it obvious that this is what I was doing, but told them that they would be each others helpers. One doubt I had about this was that the hgiher level student would not advance and be brought down by constantly working with the other student, but it was the complete opposite. The student kept on task because of the reminders and eventually didn’t need the constant help. The attention that the student was giving before was little to nothing, and after this test she was able to freely move away from the higher level child to different small groups and knew what she needed to do to stay on task. It also had a lot to do with what was required by the school district which was pretty much all book work and worksheets. At the first grade level I understand that they need to start learning how to do worksheets and other book work but it’s definately not the most exciting activities and theres not much of an option to change these activities in any way. Because of the worksheets we usually did it with the whole group, moving the students with clipboards to the carpet or scattered around the room to give them some variety.