Motivating Middle School Students

Relevance
Students must see school as relevant.  Interdisciplinary projects can be one way to increase relevance.  When students see what they learn being used in all of their classrooms, they begin to see it as more relevant.  Math knowledge is not isolated just in the 45 minute period that they sit in Math class.

Relationships
Teaming can provide an outstanding way to develop relationships.  It creates a small school inside of a bigger school.  For us at Arlington, we already have a small school.  When we created the Middle School Team, it allowed our teachers the ability to discuss student issues.  Additionally, students all had the same teachers.  The schedule became simplified.  All of the students were together at the same time.  This then allows flexibility so that you can experiment with the schedule.  At one point this year, for about a month, the 8th graders were tracked by gender.  This allowed the teachers to develop a different relationship with the students.

Making School an Experience
Fridays are activity days.  Our Middle School splits into 4 different teams based on their homeroom class. Students participate in competitions and activities for a 20 minute period.  This is a break from the normal routine and has students looking forward to Friday activities

Our teachers also develop interdisciplinary projects.  When we kick off the project, the teachers make a kickoff video.  The students all come together to watch the video.  During one kick off, the students then got to eat food from the time period they were studying in Social Studies.  They also do other hands on activities on these days.

Here are some links to videos that our Middle School Team created for the unit kickoffs:

Egypt Unit: Mummy Part I:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl7ebhBJ2XE&feature=fvsr

Egypt Unit: Mummy Part II:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoayMpzjHE8&feature=related

Ancient Rome Unit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJKG1L403Pg&feature=related

Recognizing Effort
Additionally, our state tests are called NeSA tests.  Our tradition has been to set goals with our students.  This year, if we are 95% proficient on the writing test, we will go to the Omaha Henry Doorly Zoo.  On our other tests, it is not based on results as much as preparation.  If the students exhibit the behaviors that make you a successful test taker, we will have half a day at the local softball field where students will get to play, have lunch, and just have a fun day.  Celebrate success and effort together as a school and this increases student motivation.

Motivation
Recognizing that they should not spend their entire life going to school and then going home for a second shift of school through excessive homework is also critical.  Nothing kills motivation faster than constant homework and the lack of recognizing what students enjoy. Celebrate successes and successful effort.  Once the school establishes systems promoting relevance, relationships, making school an experience, and recognizing effort, then students become more motivated.

Homework Grading Practices

Grading practice (homework or independent practice) can be counterproductive.  When students are learning, they need feedback but that feedback should not simply be a check mark on a paper.  If students are sent home with homework and know that the next day that homework will be graded, then often the student is doing that assignment for homework completion and not for learning.  Students need to be allowed to practice without it impacting their grades.

Homework Completion vs. Learning

When homework is about completion, then you will create situations where cheating is rewarded.  It also punishes students whose parents can't help them complete the assignment.  When it's all about homework completion, a student might complete the homework but not know any of the answers on the in class assessment.  Did the student learn?

Difficulty for Teachers

It is difficult for teachers who have always graded homework to give this practice up.  Teachers ask, what will the motivation be to complete the assignment?  Are we going to lose rigor?  Are the students grades going to go down (many students are saved by the homework grade)? What if some of the students stop doing homework?  This is a scary proposition.

Relevant Homework


So why would a student do the homework?  The homework must be relevant.  Students must  see the relationship between doing homework and learning.  If the student doesn't do the homework, they will not know the correct questions to ask in class.  The homework must advance learning towards the stated objectives.  Use brain research to find best practices for homework.  Don't just send students home with what we didn't get finished in class.  Students should be practicing the skill that was taught, not teaching themselves at home.  Teachers should check for understanding and do guided practice before sending students off on their own.

Students View of Homework as Practice


In a conversation in a teacher's class that uses the approach of not grading homework, an 8th grade student said "I wish you graded homework, then my grade would be better."  Another student replied, "Don't give her that idea, then if I don't get it (understand the homework) at home, then I will panic because I have to get it done."  The student identified that learning is the most important thing in this teacher's class.  In this class, if you don't "get it", you can ask without being punished with a bad grade.

Another student told me, the nice thing about Middle School is that it's not a battle about getting homework done.  Students and teachers work together to make sure that we (students) learn.

Things to consider when not grading homework

1. Homework is most productive in Math.  Other areas show little, if any, correlation between homework and learning.
2. Homework should be limited.  Add a zero to their grade for minutes of homework.  Sixth Grade = 60 minutes.  Each subject area should be at about 10 minutes because this is a total, not per class.  The default answer should be no homework and hopefully students rarely get to 60 minutes of homework.
3. Assess students with several small quizzes. 
4. Allow students to re-take quizzes.
5. Check for understanding during class.
6. Do Guided Practice during class.
7. Create systems that require students to complete homework when they regularly don't do homework and do poorly on assessments (like a lunch time homework opportunity).
8. Leave your answer book open-let students self check.
9. Learning can and should happen in groups but the assessment should be to find out what an individual knows.
10. Have an in-class test or assessment that is based on standards.  Assessments shouldn't be fluff.  In-class assessments and tests are the way to find out how much the student learned.

Homework at the Middle Level

Homework must be meaningful and must be limited.  When students get to the Middle School level, they are now moving between classes.  Teachers must plan together to assign the appropriate amount of homework.  Rick Wormelli talks about adding a 0 to the grade the student is in to determine how much homework a student should get.  If the student is in 5th grade, the appropriate amount of homework is 50 minutes.  An important point here is that 50 minutes is the total amount for all teachers to give as homework.  If we limit homework to the 4 core classes, each class should give no more than 12 minutes of homework per day. "No homework tonight" should be the default choice, not, "There is homework tonight." (Wormelli, p 41)

What amount of work takes 50 minutes?  That answer is going to be significantly different for different students.  It is important to either differentiate homework or send the homework home with a time limit.  The teacher can assign a number of problems for practice and tell students to practice for 12 minutes and then draw a line upon the completion of those 12 minutes.  Some problems will not get done.

If teachers are able to collaborate, then they should talk to each other about the amount of homework that is being given on a particular day.  If a large assignment is being given in Math, then maybe that day there is no assignment in Science.  Even then, the Math assignment should be reasonable.  Homework should not be assigned unless students have already been exposed to a topic and they have adequate background knowledge to complete the homework without additional instruction.  Homework should not simply be what we didn't get done in class.  Students should learn the topic before being sent off to practice on their own.  Following ITIP, teachers should check for understanding, then do guided practice in the room.  After guided practice is complete, then you can assign work to be done as independent practice.

Grading of homework is also an important issue.  Students' grades should not be based on their homework, but rather on in-class assessments.  Once work leaves the classroom, no guarantees can be made about who did the homework.  If in-class assessments are the way students are graded, then a student will gain no advantage by parents helping to complete the work or copying other students work.  The focus becomes learning, not homework completion.  Students begin to see a connection between the work they do and the learning that happens.

Works Cited
Wormelli, Rick. "Teaching in the Middle: Homework How we Assign it." Middle Ground:The Magazine of Middle Level Education. 11.4 (2008): 41-42. Web. 5 Feb. 2012. <http://www.amle.org/Publications/MiddleGround/Articles/April2008/Article18/tabid/1666/Default.asp&xgt;.

Grade Recovery Intervention Program

Creating a culture where failure is not allowed is certainly the first step.  Then programs must be put into place.  One size fits all approache rarely work.  In the Middle School portion of our 7-12 school, we use the Eagle Success Program when students don't do their homework.  This is held during lunch which is nice because such a large portion of our 7th and 8th graders are bus riders and many of our parents work out of town.  For our 9-12 grade students, we have the Grade Recovery Intervention Program (GRIP).  This program is designed for students who are struggling academically and are not completing homework. Individuals are assigned GRIP only if the student has a D or F.  They are also assigned a GRIP only when they are missing work.  Other programs are in place for students who have D's or F's but have completed all of their homework as these students are typically struggling more for an academic reason.  Not turning in work is a behavior and when that behavior creates a problem with grades, it is addressed.  GRIP is held after school from 3:35-4:15.  The teacher fills out a Google survey.  On that survey, it identifies the student, the assignment, the teacher assigning the GRIP, the students current grade, and any additional instructions that the GRIP coordinator needs to know.  This form takes less than one minute to fill out.  The simplicity of the form is important as teachers are very busy and as administrators, we want our teachers to use this program as needed.  The GRIP coordinator then looks at the Google spreadsheet at the end of the day.  Our GRIP coordinator is a para who comes to school 45 minutes late and stays 45 minutes after the school day.  The coordinator then assists the students in completing homework or supervises depending on the students needs.  At the conclusion of GRIP, the coordinator puts in comments to the google spreadsheet so that the teacher knows what gone finished during GRIP.  That spreadsheet is shared with the teacher so they can simply read the spreadsheet and see what got accomplished during GRIP.

GRIP is not one size fits all.  At times, we have made arrangements to serve GRIP to be in the morning.  This is only if the student doesn't need academic assistance as the coordinator will not be there to assist in at that time.  This is rare and only done for good reasons.  Additionally, as the semester comes to a conclusion, we assigned GRIP's to students who were struggling and had failed a test in which in appeared they had not studied.  The teacher and administrator worked together with the GRIP coordinator to make sure that the student studied during GRIP time and later did a re-take on the test.

It is important that the number one reason for putting a student in GRIP is a genuine concern for that student.  We want to see all students succeed.  At the same time, it is a consequence for the behavior of not turning in homework.  Therefore, this is a consequence for incomplete homework.  This consequence is greater for some students and more immediate than failing a class.  This year, we saw a significant decrease in the number of students failing courses.  At the conclusion of the first semester, we only had one student grades 9-12 fail one course.  This is down from an average of around 30 courses failed per semester.

To see examples of a GRIP form, you can look at the example in the Lunch ESP blog.  This form is very similar to that of the GRIP form.

Failure is not an option

We want all students to succeed.  As the title suggests, we want to create an environment where failure is not an option.  All teachers, counselors, support staff members, and administrators must be on the same page.  The goal is to keep high academic expectations and not allow students to fail.  Therefore, supports need to be put in place so that students can succeed.  Here are some of the changes we have made, mostly in the 2010-2011 school year and some at other times in the last 6 years:

• Arlington adopted a Middle School philosophy in the 2010-2011 school year.
• An interdisciplinary team was created with a common team plan time.
• Student issues are discussed during team plan.
• A “No Zero’s” policy was implemented in 2007.
• Meaningful and valuable assessments
• The Eagle Success Program (ESP) was developed in March of 2007.
• Differentiation and individual plans for students
• Living Above the Line is the new approach to discipline.
• High expectations have been stated and students are constantly reminded of important dates.
• High Ability Learner Program
• Student Assistance Team
• Math Lab
• Reading/Writing Lab
• Study Skills class

Each of these will be addressed in later blogs with the subtitle of "Failure is not an Option."

A full article on "Failure is not an Option" is available to members of Nebraska Association of Middle Level Educators (NAMLE) at namle.org .

Academic Labs-Failure is Not an Option

The creation of academic labs benefit our students by giving them an additional opportunity to learn in the core areas. In 2010-2011, we experimented with what we have called labs.  During periods 2-6, all 7th and 8th grade students have TA (homeroom), Math, English, Social Studies, and Science.  All 7th graders are in Math/Science and all 8th graders are in English/Social Studies at the same time.  Then we had Academic Labs followed by the other half of the core classes where 7th and 8th graders took the other 2 core classes.  These Academic labs were created for enrichment and remediation. Students would rotate through the academic labs with their homeroom classmates.

10-11 Labs (over 4 days, all students would go to each lab)

• Reading
• Writing
• Science
• Math

In 11-12, we modified our labs.  Labs are now right after TA.  Students are assigned a guided study hall or a lab depending on their academic need.  The High Ability Learners have an afternoon class that is designed to push them academically.  The labs now focus on enrichment and all students are invited to come to these labs but some students are assigned the lab.  Focus on math, reading, and writing is because our belief is that these are fundamental skills that students need to master to have a better understanding in all classes.  Students not assigned to labs are put in a guided study hall. These students do take advantage of the labs as needed based on either teachers recommendation or their own desire to get better at a  certain skill.

11-12 Labs

• Guided Study Hall 
• Reading/Writing
• Math

Our focus has been to make sure that we create an environment where all students will succeed.  These labs give students additional support.  In the last 2 years, we have had one student fail one course.  This would have been unheard of prior to the 2010-2011 school year.  This was one of many reforms we have made in our school but I believe it to be an important piece of the puzzle.

Eagle Success Program

I have presented the Living Above the Line approach to student behavior several times.  Each time, the questions end up being about our Eagles Success Program (ESP).  As you probably guessed, our mascot is the Eagles.  ESP was implemented to support teachers when we changed the Junior High to a no zero policy in the spring of 2007.  ESP is simply a program to support our philosophy.  However, without building a caring culture and a culture of all students will learn, this program will not have success.  This program is not meant to be punitive.

Here is a list of how our school implements Lunch ESP:

1. Students are required to complete homework
2. Students who are unable to complete homework will be assigned a Lunch ESP.
3. We use a google document survey that teachers fill out to assign ESP's (see below).  This document is simple and includes name of student, assignment, additional instructions, students current grade, and teacher assigning the ESP.
4. The student is told directly that they have an ESP.  We have found if you simply say anyone who didn't complete the assignment needs to serve an ESP, students don't show up.  Teachers must say "Billy, you have an ESP today" or have an area where they write it on the board and even then, reminders are still encouraged.
5. Students show up to the assigned classroom during lunch.
6. We have a para in charge of ESP.  Her job is to check the google spreadsheet (see below), go to the lunch room and get sack lunches for the students, go to the room and supervise/assist students, and let the office know if anyone didn't show.
7. The office calls the lunch supervisor if a student doesn't show up at ESP.  Now this is rare but in the beginning we regularly had to send kids down to the ESP room.  We figured out teachers had to be specific with students as stated in #4.
8. Students have lunch time to complete homework and eat lunch.  Students have enough time because our para has already gotten their lunch.  They don't have to stand in line which gives extra time to complete the homework.
9.  Students must stay in Lunch ESP the entire lunch for logistical reasons and because we don't want them to rush.
10. Students in afternoon classes can be assigned an ESP for the next day.  However, if they complete it prior to the next day and turn it in to the teacher by an agreed upon time, then the student will not have an ESP.  This is where the culture is important.  Teachers who want to use this as punishment for late work will not like this.  Remember, the goal is that the work gets completed, not to punish kids for not getting it in on time.

Google Documents

What the administrator and para in charge of ESP sees:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ais4XuARPyYcdDE3WmtTdnlxYnV2TGVmTVNsaDF2MEE#gid=0

What teachers fill out:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dDE3WmtTdnlxYnV2TGVmTVNsaDF2MEE6MA#gid=0



Programs are simply programs.  Without the caring culture and a culture of all students will learn, this will simply be seen as a detention served at lunch.  That then builds a negative, punitive feeling.  In order to succeed, a strong culture must first be built and programs like this can then become powerful.