Help for
Helpless Handraisers

When teachers begin to work the crowd during independent work, they immediately confront the natural enemy of mobility -- helpless handraisers. Every classroom in the country has at least five or six of them -- the same students day after day.

The teacher must tutor those needy students one at a time. How long does that take? The average is four-and-a-half minutes. As the teacher helps the needy student, he or she 1) loses control of the class in 10 seconds, as students begin to chit-chat, and 2) offers massive social reinforcement for help-seeking, which soon becomes ingrained as a pattern of learned helplessness. Helpless handraising soon morphs into a motivational problem as students discover that the ticket to one-on-one nurturance from the teacher is to do nothing.

Viewed up close, it would seem that a great many of the teachers discipline, instruction, and motivation problems derive from the way in which corrective feedback is given during independent work. That raises the question, "How, exactly, do you help a student who is stuck?"

For starters, corrective feedback must be brief -- a simple prompt that answers the question, "What do I do next?" That focuses the students attention, while avoiding cognitive overload. Next, the student must perform the prompt immediately. That avoids forgetting. Then the teacher must leave, because helpless handraisers are experts at "wallowing" to keep you there.

Source: Weaning the Helpless Handraisers

09/14/2010