Tasha Becomes a LearnerOne strategy I use to help students see themselves as learners is to set clear ex-
pectations for acceptable academic and social behaviors and to hold my students
accountable for their participation in class. To that end, I ask my students to eval-
uate their own work by giving themselves a score based on the following questions.
Did I actively participate in learning?
Did I try my hardest?
Did I use everythingI know to help myself with the problem?
Did I get distracted, off task?Points are determined at the end of each academic period or task. The number of
points is determined by the degree of difficulty of the task or the length of the pe-
riod. For example, 8 points might be given for science, which is a ninty-minute
block, 6 points for reading workshop, which lasts sixty minutes, and 4 points for
swimming, which is forty-five minutes long. Students tell me what they think
they have earned, and I record the points on a sheet for each day. The points are
then totaled for the week. Student can use the points to buy free time once a week
if they have earned 75 percent of the total possible points that could be earned
for the week. If students don’t give themselves full points, they need to explain
why (i.e., “I gave myself 4 points out of 6, because I was talking at the beginning
of reading workshop and wasted time”). This helps students to acknowledge their
actions, or inaction. Students come to accept responsibility for their learning.
Like many students, Tasha was initially overly critical of herself. If she had a
difficult time with part of a lesson or got off task even for a minute, she gave her-
self a 0. With practice, Tasha was able to be more objective about her behavior.
The questions I asked encouraged her to consider all aspects of her learning.
Without the questions, Tasha tended to get trapped by thinking that she was
terrible at math or that she was bad because she got off task for a minute or two.
The questions acknowledged partial success and prompted her to try using
anything and everything that she knew about how numbers worked to help her
solve problems.
At the beginning of fifth grade, I grouped Tasha with some other girls who were
also struggling to build their self-esteem. Tasha realized that she wasn’t the only one
who didn’t understand some of the mathematics and that it was OK to not be per-
fect and to ask for help. Tasha was performing the best in that group, which gave
her a sense of self-assurance. Once she gained confidence, I sometimes grouped her
with a stronger student so she could learn from someone with more advanced strate-
gies. I wanted to give Tasha the message that she was capable of learning more com-
plex strategies from her peers. For example, when I wanted Tasha to move to work-
ing with larger multiples (e.g., 250 instead of 25), I paired her with another student
who would also be patient in showing Tasha the relationships between the multiples.