Show them the success part 1 - a means of motivation

Back when I was a new teacher, I was having trouble motivating a class. My very wise mentor, Chris Campbell, told me to show them the success. I started doing this, and I noticed engagement go up, behaviour improve and students progressing.

Now showing students their success can take many forms: displays of great work; cascading good practice through precise praise; messages home; feedback; peer reviews; and so on. I'll do blog posts about some of those at other times. What I want to write about here is showing them success over time. 

You might call these progress passports, or assessment trackers, or success sheets. Whatever you call them, the essential part is it's a sheet that is easily accessible to students where they record their marks from assessments. Rather like this:

For those classes using exercise books, I have them glue it in the inside front cover; for those using Chromebooks, I have them pin it onto their bookmark bar. 

Over the course of the year, this becomes an invaluable motivational tool. Students who are despondent, who claim they just don't get a subject, can be told to refer back to their easily accessible list of successes for a quick bit of reassurance.

"Ah ha!"  I hear you say, "What about those students who do badly? Surely this then just reinforces their negative view of themselves?"

OK, fair point. This is where the Minimum Expected Grade comes in. See the space for it at the top right? This is a personalised target for each student, based on their prior achievement in your subject. It should be easily attainable for them. Therefore, they should, more often than not, surpass it in an assessment. So, even if they are a D grade/3 student, if you you've set their MEG as an E/2, even a low C/4 feels like a massive victory. 

There are loads of other uses for a good progress tracker, and loads of other ways to show students success - they'll be in later blogs. As will more on MEGs. For now, a visible remind of past successes that students can quickly refer to is a great long-term boost for students' self-esteem and well-worth you putting some time into making. 




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