Special Education

Rallying Randoms to Better Learning

By John Wessels, Ph. D., Ten Sigma

Following is a summary of a presentation “Learning Styles: What are they thinking?” delivered by Dr. Wessels at the Sixth-Annual Paraprofessional Training Day: Together Everyone Achieves More.

School is mostly about learning details. That is, reading detailed information, writing about details, discussing details in class, and taking tests that ask for knowledge of details. Random students, who are big-picture thinkers, detest details. As a result, they often have difficulty succeeding in school, which often leads them to getting poor grades, doing poorly on tests, and dropping out of school.

Randoms can learn to succeed at a higher level. Here are four ways to help random students succeed better in school: 1) motivate them, 2) provide them with clear expectations, 3) make learning repetitive, and 4) hold them relentlessly accountable.

Motivate Randoms
Three ways to motivate random students are 1) help them see the long- and/or short-term importance of doing a task, 2) make tasks challenging and/or exciting, and 3) put pressure on them to do tasks well. For true success, randoms need to experience all three ways in appropriate balance.

Provide Randoms With Clear Expectations
Since randoms focus on the big-picture, they need to know exactly what details are expected of them. Rubrics, particularly list rubrics, are the best tool for making expectations clear. They lay out the exact steps, criteria, or procedures that randoms need to follow in order to be successful. For example, if I told a student to clean his/her room, I could say “clean your room”. Or, I could say, “clean your room—here is a rubric specifying the ten things on which you should focus”. The rubric provides clear expectations (details) that the random can follow in cleaning his/her room.

Make Learning Repetitive
Randoms generally hear a more vague (big-picture) version of what a teacher says or an author writes in a text book than is actually true. When they need to recall the information they have learned, the information is often more vague than is needed. Learning the information repetitively in through a variety of methods, increases the odds that the student will be able to add correct details to the vague picture they have stored in their heads. Remember that while repetitiveness is important, it must come through different methods, such as reading, talking, competing, solving, exploring, etc. to be effective.

Hold Randoms Relentlessly Accountable
Randoms want to look at the big-picture and struggle with the details. Relentless accountability is a term that means both relentlessness (no exceptions) and accountability (every detail will be checked). When every detail is checked with no exceptions over time, the random usually gives in and learns the details. Remember, while relentless accountability is effective, if it is done without motivation (knowing the importance for tasks and including exciting and challenging tasks), the random will ultimately become disenchanted.

Since the vast majority of teachers in America are Sequential (an estimation based on 10 years of testing teachers at workshops), it may be difficult to implement all four of these methods at once. Start with one method and see if it helps. Try several motivational activities. Try rubrics (most secondary schools in Region 9 own many of Ten Sigma’s rubrics on CD). Try repeating an important point through a variety of learning situations. Finally, try holding students relentlessly accountable for an important skill. You might be pleasantly surprised at the results, particularly from the randoms.