Teaching Persistance

  Too many of my students give up when they think the work is too hard, especially when I ask them to work independently.  It is frustrating when I ask them to do one step and they shut down because they tell me "Its too hard."  If I do it all on the board, they come to rely on me too much and they never learn to do it.  In addition, they do not learn persistence.

I just finished reading an article on how the Japanese teach problem solving and persistence to students.  I'm  sharing it because the method involves more from students than the method most teachers here use.

The method is referred to as "Teaching through problem solving" not "Teaching problem solving."  The second is where we teach students the standard steps used to solve problems, especially word problems.  But teaching through problem solving is different.  In this method, the teacher sets up the context and introduces the problem before allowing about 10 minutes for students to work on it.  During that time, the teacher walks around, monitoring progress and noting which approaches are being used.

It is only after this exploration time, the teacher begins a whole class discussion to allow students a chance to share their ideas for solving the problem.  Rather than stopping here, students are asked to think about and compare the ideas, decide which ones are incorrect and why, which ideas are similar, which are more elegant or which ones are effective.  So they are having an in-depth discussion on the different approaches.

The idea behind this method is that students learn new material, ideas, or procedures using discussion. An example of how this plays out is as follows.

Textbooks are closed and the board is totally empty.  The teacher either projects or places a poster with empty rabbit cages of different sizes.  The teacher leads the class questioning them about their observations of the cages and certain assumptions they could make from what they saw.  Next the teacher displays each cage with rabbits for students to share their observations.  This leads to a student asking about crowdedness in the cages. 

The teacher passes out pictures of the cages with rabbits for students to glue in their notebooks. They refer to the pictures as they work independently to determine crowdedness.   As the teacher wanders around the classroom, observing work, he or she may ask what the student is doing and suggests they write the idea down in their notebooks.

After 5 or 10 minutes, the teacher asks students to share their ideas with everyone. The students write down the common ones, then continue pursuing their thought for a few more minutes before sharing more ideas. The teacher guides the discussion  through the main ideas and context till students have arrived at the actual lesson material.

I'd love to do this type of lesson but I know it will be hard because my students arrive in high school with a learned helplessness that I have to overcome.  It is all one step at a time.

Let me know what you think.  I'd love to hear.