Monitoring
Liza's Improvement
Liza is a very talkative and friendly student. When she is focused on
what is being discussed in class, she participates well and contributes
intelligently. However, she is often distracted by students around her.
Her extroverted nature causes her to chat with whomever is around her.
I suspect that in many classes she is able to do well despite this habit.
She does not see a correlation between not paying attention to class and
not doing well. However, her poor grades were discouraging her from making
an attempt to learn the material- so often she had been able to come class
and just do well on the test. With chemistry, it was different. She was
struggling. Notice that on her test she has a general idea about what needs
to be done, but the details are not there. She is able to pick up some
information in class, but the fact that she does not do her homework or
take careful notes causes her to only have a hint of the correct procedure.
After I see this trend, my mentor mentions to Liza's mom that her talkative
nature in class is getting in the way of her studies. Her mother refuses
to believe that it is her child's extroverted personality that is preventing
success. This incidence demonstrated to me that I was not going to get
help from her parents. Therefore, I talked with Liza and we decided that
we would meet at lunch time to go over details of the lesson. Unfortunately,
she only came to tutoring sporadically. As you can see on this quiz, she
came on days where I tutored her on balancing equations and identifying
acidic and basic anhydrides. However, we did not go over decomposition
and synthesis reactions.
Due to her and her classmates' inability to notice details while labs
are going on, I decided that I would try to be more explicit on what I
expected from lab reports before they began the lab. Additionally, I either
provided on the board or gave them a xerox of a table that they could use.
With this support, the students were much more successful with their lab
reports. Notice that Liza's work is much neater and that her thoughts seem
to be more coherent.
With the tutoring and the encouragement, she was doing a lot better.
However, as you can see with this test, she still is not catching the subtle
details. For questions 38 and 41 on her chemical reactions test she has
written products without considering whether the reaction will occur or
not. She is not following a careful, set procedure, but instead is going
with whatever comes in her head. This does not always work to her benefit,
while other times her intuition is great.
I thought that she was establishing a routine and that she was making
great strides of improvement. She went from a 66 on a test to an 81. I
must admit that I let her off the hook some in the sense that I was not
constantly checking up on her homework and note taking. This was a mistake
because she had immediately turned back to her old habits as you can see
in this stoichiometry quiz. She randomly puts a number on her paper or
starts multiplying numbers together with no logic whatsoever.
I decided that I what I needed to start doing was collecting homework
and grading it on a semi-regular basis. In this way, I would be getting
more feedback from the students and I would be better able to assess what
details the students were not realizing. As you can see, Liza's homework
is messy and disorganized. This caused me to review with the students the
steps I laid out for them when I first presented the material. I wanted
to emphasize that not only should they know the steps but they should understand
why they need to be done and what each step means in the calculation. This
attention to comprehension is missing from Liza's homework.
Liza and I had a big talk at lunch. We went over study habits and her
tendency to talk in class. She finally got down to business. I believe
that by telling her that I thought that she could do better made a difference.
We looked at her improvement from the mole test to the chemical reactions
test. I pointed out to her what I noticed. She admited that although she
thought she studied her idea of studying probably was not conducive to
learning. Often times she studied with the tv on or while talking on the
phone with her friends. We made a pact that she would really study for
this test. The improvement was amazing.
Even after our pact and her wonderful grade, Liza did not become an
A student. She participates in class and asks good questions during lab
that show that she is paying attention to details more readily. Her grades
continue to fluctuate however. Her effort seems to correlate directly to
how much attention I pay her. Unfortunately, I am not always able to give
her the attention she needs 100% of the time. In order for her to become
an excellent student, she needs to form an inner motivation system. Only
by having autonomy will she be consistent in her success. I was unable
to help her reach this point of self-motivation while I student taught.
If I had had more time with her, I would have attempted a goal-oriented
strategy where she set small goals for herself. In this way, she would
have something to work towards and by creating them on her own she could
learn how to self-regulate with my support.