Maintaining Students’ Focus in the Spring

Getting through the second half of the year can be difficult. Just this week, I was visiting a department meeting and the chair was reminding teachers that right around now, students need more support to maintain their stamina, interest, and sense of well-being. In the second half of the school year, kids often experience a downward slide in achievement as their engagement and stamina decline and dysregulation increases.

As a recent MindShift article notes, “The second semester brings a lot of potential challenges to teachers’ regularly scheduled programming because of standardized testing, graduation events, and student burnout.” These challenges may be complex, but they are not insurmountable. With subtle shifts in practice, classrooms can remain safe and productive spaces—even in the spring. 

Challenge: Declining Grades

Students are wired to focus more on the transient motivation of grades over feedback, which is a mindset that results in disengagement if grades start to drop. Research shows that when students see grades before feedback, they tend to ignore constructive comments, leading to further declines in performance. For example, a more basic grading approach that teachers might take is to leave strings of comments on student work, which often either go misunderstood or are unread entirely.

Upgrade: Grades and feedback often get conflated with one another, but where the former is an evaluative measure, feedback is an objective determination of student progress toward specific criteria for success. Teachers are short on time, which can elevate grades at the expense of a more meaningful feedback process. To make room for helping students gain a deeper understanding of what they need to accomplish to be successful, we can leverage what little time there is each day by shifting the focus from summative grading to formative feedback. 

Suppose students have created research presentations about the role of carbon in photosynthesis in their science class. A teacher might return the presentations with strings of comments or an inexplicable grade attached. Instead, the teacher can provide feedback on a list of criteria that students have had from the start of the presentation process with items such as these:

1. Your presentation clearly details the journey of a carbon atom.
2. At least three visuals and specific examples support your main points.
3. The scientific concepts in your presentation (like photosynthesis) are correctly explained.

Provided that students have this list of criteria in advance, not only will their presentations be more likely to meet the expected standard, but also the feedback process will be more streamlined for the teacher. The lower levels of frustration that result from added clarity will ease the type of burnout that both teachers and students feel as achievement atrophies in the second part of the school year. 

Challenge: Lower Levels of Interest

By midyear, students may lose interest in their classes. They might find that the routines are repetitive or that there is no real connection between the course content and their personal experience. This also decreases meaningful cognitive engagement, which hurts student performance. Teachers might try to improve matters by attempting to tap into student interest, but such shifts are often temporary or too superficial to make any kind of lasting change.

Upgrade: Although nurturing student interests is certainly important, this approach has limited power to create lasting engagement. Too often, teachers over-scaffold instruction or lower their standards. To make change, two priorities must be in place: The first is to make sure that the work itself is both engaging and meaningful, and the second is to elevate student voice and choice.

When teachers elicit more profound levels of engagement, we must ensure that there is ample opportunity to engage in higher-order thinking about grade-level content. One way to incorporate this practice into any classroom is to give students ample guidance for asking questions. 

Suppose that a sixth-grade social studies teacher is about to complete a daily lesson about the cultural practices of ancient Greece. Instead of summarizing the learning for students, a far more engaging move is to ask students to craft (and perhaps answer) higher-order thinking questions about what they got from the lesson, such as “What important values in ancient Greece are still part of our culture today?” Not only can the teacher collect these questions to determine next steps; ideally, students also have time to stand up, find a partner or a small group, and share their questions with one another so that everyone in the room is participating and engaged. 

To create a learner-centered space that prioritizes student choice, we can introduce projects or more active opportunities for hands-on learning that tie lessons to topics that students find relevant. For example, if high school students are frustrated with the lack of representation in how the Renaissance is discussed in European history, they could do a project to explore artists of the period whose work is lesser known because of their racial or ethnic background. This type of learning opportunity is driven by choice and is therefore more likely to increase both interest and engagement. 

Challenge: Higher Degrees of Frustration

Students are not always more comfortable midway through the school year. Many secondary students switch classes and teachers at the midpoint, which causes instability. Also, the winter months can increase feelings of depression or anxiety, and the springtime can be a significant distraction in its own way as students become more restless. Students may therefore be more likely to experience emotional dysregulation, leading to classroom disruptions or feelings of being undervalued. In such instances, teachers might address what is happening with individual students when a more classwide approach is appropriate.

Upgrade: Students feel more grounded if teachers implement strategies that set everyone up for success the moment they enter the classroom. For example, dedicating a few minutes at the start of class to frame the learning with an accessible activator increases confidence for learning.

Suppose a middle school student who reads slowly is nervous because she didn’t have time to finish an assigned article about the rise of Mussolini. Instead of starting class with a reading check or activity that is focused on accountability, the teacher begins with questions that are general to the themes of the reading and that all students can answer, such as “What does it mean to have power? In what ways have you seen people abuse their power?”

We can also create spaces within their classrooms that normalize the management of anxiety. For my most recent book, I interviewed social worker and author Phyllis Fagell about how students can more effectively manage their feelings. She recommends a “coping jar” to help students identify moments of angst and manage their feelings. Fagell explains that when students find an effective coping mechanism, they write their idea on one side of a Popsicle stick and explain how it works on the other side. As students add ideas to the jar, they have an increased awareness of coping strategies and the importance of helping one another.

With the recognition of the challenges that kids face and upgrades that make classroom life a little better, we all have the power to help our students see this school year through successfully.