Strategies:

Strategies to help students see relatedness between themselves and the content

• Teach transparently- task, purpose criteria

  1. Teach transparently.

  2. As Linda Nilson points out in her book Creating Self-Regulated Learners, students see value in assignments when “they believe it will help them receive a good grade in the course, obtain a job, achieve success in a career, or learn about something important to them.” On the contrary, they will not work hard on tasks they believe to be meaningless busywork.

  3. For every assignment, help students clearly understand the task, purpose and criteria. Students are more motivated when they know what is expected of them and there is a clear pathway to improvement. However, they cannot know these things unless we explicitly tell them.

• Create productive/complementary groups

  1. A twist on clock buddies:

     1. The teacher fills them out ahead of time with groups geared for specific projects

     2. Alternatively, the teacher fills out ONE of the times and allows students to fill in the other slots. When a student is having issues, the teacher uses the predesignated time for the clock buddies.