CITW+Summary

=Chapter 8 Reinforcing Effort =

Those who want to achieve success and maintain it need to have some self-motivation skills. Often students do not correlate the relationship of effort with achievement.


 * It is important to teach students the importance of effort.
 * Technology makes it easier to have students track the effects of their effort.

Often students like to blame outside sources for their successes and failures such as blaming a parent or friend. Using spreadsheet software you can have a student track his or her own effort.

The first step is to create a rubric that gives the students and idea of what good effort looks like. Rubistar is a great website for this. The book also contains a great example for a starting point. (pg 157)


 * It is important that the students are taught how to use the rubric and how to honestly assess them before the rubric is given to the students to use on their own.

The example in the book tells of a teacher who has the students assess their effort before they take their Friday test. Then on Monday the students compare their effort to the grade they received on the test. In doing this students are able to see the correlation between the effort they put forth and their test grade.

After several tests or assignments that have been evaluated the students can chart their growth using Microsoft Excel. This will give the students a visual tool to assess their effort as well. Students can evaluate their own effort and achievement as well as classmates.

Another was of assessing effort is by creating a survey for students to take on how much effort they put forth. They can then sit down with a teacher or an older student and discuss the outcome of their achievement and how effort plays a role. Survey Monkey Rubistar