Student lack of engagement Unit 3 Chapter 1

Surprisingly, I am struggling with student behavior in this chapter. I have a few students who totally “Get” it and the rest don’t. The ones who do are bored because they finish early and the don’ts are checking out. It is very difficult to teach this to a large group, and when I do, by pushing my screen out to theirs, they check out. If I go to help an individual, the rest start messing around. I’ve graded several bubbles, providing feedback, so they know they must do each task.

Hi @susan.honsinger!

I’ve experienced this before.

I’m wondering if you’ve tried to leverage those who ‘get it’ to become your assistants in the classroom? I’ve used my students who were able to complete the lesson faster than others to help students who were stuck.

I spend some time speaking to the students who usually finish first, and discussed their roles as my assistants. I made sure they knew they were only a guide and not giving away answers.

I do that to some extent but I may try to make it more official.

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I had a student who had taught himself Java Script the summer before taking this course. I created a section just for him and let him work independently. I was able to keep track of his progress and had him email me when he had completed specific lessons. He was also my student helper. The other students in the classroom went to him before coming to me.

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I’m having a similar issue. I’ve got one class that students just don’t care to do anything.

In an attempt to let them feel some sense of success I’ve even dial them down to the elementary curriculum. It’s a High School class, they should be in CSP, they refused to participate in CSD, so now we’re in Course E of CSF.

I’ve got a large mix of ELL & students with accommodations. the dialing back curriculum has really helped the students with accommodations feel successful. Most of the rest still nothing, opportunities for cultural celebration are even ignored.

Idea’s for carrots I can dangle in front of High Schoolers to get them to do elementary work?

Yeah, I have to say this is an ongoing issue for me. This is my 33rd year teaching (5th year in CS\tech for grades 6-8) so I would like to think I know all the bells & whistles about trying to make things interesting and trying to motivate students. But only some of the 8th grade students are intrinsically motivated and take things more than half-way seriously. I try and mix things up for them (paper-based design challenges, 3d modeling, digital art, etc., etc.) along with the Unit 2 we do for the “coding” work, but that only seems to work for a short period of time. My class is an “encore” class for 10 weeks and I think they just don’t put as much effort in as their “core” classes. Anything that pushes them and is remotely challenging makes them check out. My 6th graders are almost all great. Most of my 7th graders are fine (depending on the time of day and quarter), but the majority of my 8th graders don’t give a hoot. I know this is a function of an 8th graders development, but was it always this way for 8th graders or is it new? Sigh…

For Jr. High it’s always been the simplest things that get them to work for me. Gold star stickers for getting the task done with the correct number of code blocks, or a star stamp on their hand, a lifesaver mint (and then they have fresh breathe too).

Classroom scratch off tickets, print, laminate, paint over the scratch off part (equal parts paint & liquid dish soap). Prizes were things like, get to work in the hall for a class period, steal the teachers chair for a class period. Anything that didn’t cost me money.