Monday, October 10, 2011

What happens in 6th grade...

I started working with the afterschool Pathways to Success Program at school today, and I'm going to be working with 6th graders. While this may be challenging having to teach different material after 5 classes on the same thing, I really think these 6th graders will be a breath of fresh air to me. They were eager to listen, took out paper and took notes without complaining, and were ASKING for more problems to work and to complete the problems on the board. It was so refreshing after dealing with my 8th graders who complain on the regular. But then it got me to thinking...

What happens between 6th and 8th grade?

What happens to make these eager, interested, enthralled students turn into kids that don't seem to care about school? Why do they lose their interest in school and their ability to care about learning? What makes them do these?

I would be very interested in tracking these students' attitudes and interest in school throughout the rest of the year, as well as their 7th grade year. I want to see where it changes (or IF it changes...it could just be the dynamic of the different groups of students).

It was such a breath of fresh air to work with kids that were excited to learn, asking questions, and asking for more help when they needed it. What can I do to inspire this type of behavior in my students? I want to work with students like this every day, so I have got to do something to get my kids back to this point. I've got to figure out how to make learning cool again!

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