Group 3

Dear Ms. Wormwoord...

Curriculum (Abigail):

We believe you should be building your curriculum based on supporting Calvin and wanting to see him succeed. To do this you must first create a sense of community in the classroom with your students. Calvin and students should feel supported and like they are set up to succeed in your classroom. Especially with Calvin we can see how it might be difficult to encourage him to learn, so we recommend creating a portfolio for him. This portfolio might include his interests like dinosaurs and his tiger Hobbes. In the portfolio you should create realistic and achievable goals that you and Calvin can come up with together. Creating the goals together will generate a relationship between the two of you, and genuine interest in his well-being. This will give Calvin a sense of responsibility, autonomy, and ownership of his own work. The portfolio should include his progress with these goals throughout the year and creating new ones when old ones are completed. You should also show Calvin his progress, so he can understand that he is learning and growing, this allows him to build his self-efficacy for future assignmemts.

Speaking of Calvin's interests, we believe that the curriculum should be interest based and the entire class would benefit with more hands-on activities. We encourage you to create lesson plans with more real-world applications and offer your students the ‘why’ allowing them to understand the application. These types of lesson plans might create a more engaging classroom, where students like Calvin want to learn and grow. When giving returning assignments to students, especially Calvin, you should give genuine and supportive feedback where they can improve. We think you should promote a curriculum that supports Calvin's competency and sense of belonging.

Communication with Calvin's Parents (Ellie):

Ms. Wormwood, as I’m sure we’re both aware, parents and teachers play a big role in a student’s academic life. This can be the difference between Calvin being a passive student and an engaged learner. The biggest change that needs to happen is better communication between you and his parents about Calvin and how to support him best. For example, how to best motivate Calvin. Currently, Calvin is in the amotivation stage, which means he has no motivation to learn. In order to become an engaged learner, he needs to move from amotivation to extrinsic and eventually intrinsic motivations. That being said, there are certain steps he can take and different ways we can support him to become the best learner possible. In order to become the best student he can be, he needs strategies and support put in place to help him. For example, if we support Calvin in things like setting goals and planning his workout, that will make sure he’s on top of his work and in turn make him more motivated. If we allow time for him to reflect, think about his learning, and tell us what works and what doesn’t, this will also make him more motivated, which seems to be one of his biggest problems. In order to get the most out of this, you should allow time for these things in the classroom but also at home. As his parents, they can ask him about his day, ask him about what his goals are, and check in with him and his teacher to see what he’s struggling with.

Another problem we’ve run into is that Calvin is living with a fixed mindset currently. A fixed mindset leaves him avoiding challenges, not taking feedback well, and shying away from things that are unfamiliar or hard. While having a fixed mindset isn’t the biggest problem in the world, it’s important to flip it to a growth mindset. A growth mindset will allow him to grow and learn from failures, view challenges as opportunities, and step out of his comfort zone. As his parents, they need to help him and support him by making sure that they foster an environment for growth mindsets. They can do this by not only supporting him and cheering him on when he doesn’t succeed the first time but also having growth mindsets of their own. There’s nothing worse than an adult telling you to do one thing and then for them to go and do the complete opposite. Last, Calvin needs to want to learn. We know Calvin is a smart kid with lots of passion for what he wants to learn about. So we need to incorporate that in the classroom. If Calvin is passionate about learning about dinosaurs one day, find a way to incorporate that into your lesson. And tell his parents to incorporate it into their home lives. If Calvin’s parents take even just ten minutes to talk to Calvin about his interests every day or even what he’s learning at school, he will feel more supported and want to learn. Overall, supporting Calvin and his learning needs to come from school and from home. 

One on One Interactions (Aline)

Dear Miss Wormwood, 

  One thing that you might forget in all the responsibilities of being a teacher is how much you as a teacher can affect a student. It might be easy to forget to check in with every single one of your students. But it is so critically important to give students that one on one interaction. Not only that, but you must ensure it is a positive interaction with them. Some of the most important things you should do as a teacher is getting to know your students and what their interests are. This way you can make your content more engaging for your students by connecting their interest in learning. 

You can start with the way your students papers. If you have a habit of marking your students assignments with a lot of red X’s and marks, your students will see this as they cannot do any good. Instead you can try using a more neutral color for starters since students associate red with wrong. And instead of marking what’s wrong you can provide helpful feedback so that the student can learn from their mistakes and improve. This can also be done in one on one meetings with the individual.     

Another really important thing to keep in mind as a teacher is how you view your students. If you don't believe in your students, they will pick up on that and see themselves that way. For example, if you don't even bother trying to help a student because you think they are a lost cause, that will only make the student believe the same thing and have a harder time getting out of that mindset. Especially since that energy is coming from someone who he should look up to, so they must be right.  

Taking the time to help your alienated students feel like they are a part of the classroom community will help overall. Take time with one student at a time and get to know them to figure out how you can help them feel a sense of belonging in your classroom. 

Helping your students set individual achievable goals that are accommodated to their unique abilities, helps students feel accomplished and therefore feel motivated to grow their learning. 

Taking the time to praise each student will be beneficial to them. As you get to know them, learn their struggling areas and praise them when you notice they are doing better. But be sure to praise them on effort and not on their “smartness”. For example, you might say, “I notice you’ve been really studying the word problems and it shows!” Rather than “You’re doing great because you’re smart!”. This makes it so students attribute their success to something that can always improve (their effort/ studying/ hard work) rather than something that feels innate (born smart).

  I hope you consider these strategies in your classroom to enhance learning in your classroom. Helping your students be better will help you in the future. It will help many students just like Calvin. 

Classroom Management (Lauren)

Dear Ms. Wormwood,

The way you treat Calvin in the classroom has an immense impact on his learning and his motivation in school. Building a healthy teacher-student relationship is very important for fostering a safe space and sense of community for students to learn in. 

One way you could improve on this is recognizing and praising Calvin's efforts in class. This will help build a growth mindset where he is intrinsically motivated to do well and wont give up if he doesn't achieve mastery. 

Another way would be to provide more choices in Calvin's learning to give him autonomy. This would give him confidence and feel more responsible for the content he's learning. This can also help Calvin to become intrinsically motivated to learn in your class.

Calvin struggles a lot with seeing the relevance of the content he's learning. I think you could help him with this by connecting the material to real life scenarios to show him real examples of how he can use the new information in other aspects of life. 

I hope you consider these suggestions for how you can better manage Calvin in the classroom.