|
ENGAGING MALES IN CLASSROOM LEARNING
 An ongoing series sharing with you exciting findings from the research on my new book to help you get the boys in your class to reach their true potential!
|
|
Why Teachers Should Meet Boys Where They Learn
There are six "places" boys have gone to learn since the earliest times. While not physical locations they are just as real, because they influence how male brains have been wired to learn. Teachers who meet boys' minds in these places find eager learners who are engaged and enthusiastic about meeting the teacher's expectations.
|
What We See...  He does little in class and what he does get done shows little effort; He often says it's too hard or he doesn't understand...  He may produce some work if the pressure is put on, but their production flags once the pressure is removed; Even when you know that he understands what is taught, it's like pulling teeth to get him to write anything!  He will spend hours of effort on something he wants to do, like skateboarding , videogames, or sports. Why? Because he sees a worthy challenge in one thing but not in the other... |
|
|
|
|
Why Challenge is Important for Males
Physiological rewards
We saw in an earlier newsletter that games and competition draw boys because of the testotsterone boost they get in winning. The challenge of the game is what draws the male efforts and the rewards of winning. Challenge works as a learning tool with boys because they crave it and use it to discover things about themselves and their environment.
Boys look for challenges
In Why Gender Matters, Dr. Leonard Sax recounts a research project where men and women were asked to stand in a room alone and toss rings around a pole as many times as they could. Most women stood next to the pole and made all of their shots. Not one male did. They all tried form various distances to see how far they could get away and still make the shots.
The task of getting the rings around the post was fairly simple, but the males in the study needed to make it interesting by tossing the rings from challenging distances.
A pathway to mastery
In that process, they were no doubt trying different strategies using speed, spin and height with the goal of improving their performance. This unconscious drive for mastery is triggered naturally and without prompting when males decide to respond to a challenge..
|
How to Use Challenge in the Classroom
Challenge can be a very effective learning tool for males in class, but it relies on a boy's perception of the challenge. The elements of that perception are his belief in the personal resources he has to meet the challenge, the construction of the challenge, and how closely the challenge relates to his personal interests and goals. In my book, I will explore these more deeply, but here are some suggestions to get you started |
|
1. Ask students about challenges that interest them
Because the need for challenge is universal among males, but the types of challenges that will spur the greatest accomplishment vary with individual boys, it is useful to bring the idea of challenge to the culture of the classroom. This is most easily done by provoking discussion about great accomplishments in sports, music, movies, and video-games. Just asking students to identify their favourite athlete of game is not enough, however. You need to drill down and ask about why the athlete is so good or the game is so much fun. Invariably you will discover that the source of the pleasure is in the challenges that the sports figure can meet, or that fact that the game requires you demonstrate skill before you win.
2. Involve Students in Task Planning
Following a discussion about challenge, involving them in creating challenges around the material to be learned can be very effective. One teacher told me that when he asked a boy-heavy classroom to come up with a challenging way to learn a science concept, he was blown away by how hard the students were willing to work: "They set much more stringent and rigorous goals for the class success in the concept than I would have--or than was required by the curriculum--and then they set about accomplishing them. I just had to get out of the way. Most intriguing of all, those who took the greatest leadership were those kids I had pegged as terminally lazy!"
3. Use Activities that embed challenge
One reason that teachers find that KEEN strategies are helpful with boys is because challenge is part of the activity. Take a look at this Still Life w/Spin Out™ activity where students were challenged to use it and come up with effective ways to make connections between stereotypes in the novel To Kill a Mocking Bird and examples that they could identify in the real world.
 | | IR16SLwSP |
|
