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Case study in motivation Steffani Tuttle December 16, 2011 EDU 615 Dr. Thea Williams-Black

2 I first met Dante in summer school where he was in my class for reading. The second day of summer school, we had to switch around

his schedule because he and another student were bowing up at each other and about to fight. Throughout the two weeks of summer school,

he would vacillate between participating and shutting down. Surprisingly he would always volunteer to read out loud, but when having to write he would get aggravated and give up on the assignment if it seemed too difficult for him. Several times during that time

period he had temper tantrums over such things as not getting to go get water when he wanted to or having to move his seat. Dante is a twelve-year old sixth grade special education student who has been held back one grade level with a specific learning disability. his peers. ability. He is around 58 with great leadership skills amongst Unfortunately he does not set a good example with that

He is defiant and extremely disrespectful to teachers and He will tell teachers who stop him in the

other school personnel.

hall that they cannot tell him what to do or will just totally ignore them and keep on walking. Dante is in team-taught classes for science and social studies and in small group classes for reading/language arts and math. In his larger team-taught classes he seems to be

intimidated by the other students and his behavior is acceptable, but when he gets into his small group classes he seems to feel that his disrespectful and immature behavior will be accepted by the other students in small group. He is on a third grade reading level and in I think a lot of his behavior issues If anything is a

about the same place for math.

come from his frustrations in these two areas.

3 challenge at all you will see his behavior change and he has on several occasions thrown his book to the side or stated that the task is stupid or retarded. His other teachers and I have conferenced He started out the

with him several times about how to ask for help.

year asking with attitude and sometimes adding girl to the end as in I need help, girl. We have ignored him when he asks inappropriately

and this behavior is improving. I chose Dante as my case study because his behavior has such an effect on his learning and that of others. The boys look up to him

because he is athletic and cool and the girls think that he is cute and are always trying to get his attention. In my small group

language arts class he has had such an effect on my class that it has been a struggle from day one to get through a lesson. Every other day

that class comes back for reading support and we go through it all again. He has the potential to be successful, regardless of his

learning disability, if he can get his behavior under control. The CRCT is the state test for Georgia. Dante has not For

traditionally done well on this test that is given in the spring.

a student to meet expectations on the test they must make a minimum of 800 on each section of the test. any subject area. Dante did not meet expectations on

He has already been held back one grade, so

retaining him was not really an option even though he did not pass either math or reading which are the requirements, along with passing

grades on report cards, to move on to the next grade level.

4 2011 CRCT Criterion Referenced Competency Test: expectations) Reading 777 Language Arts 787 Math 782 Science 780 Social Studies 771 Even with special education support and accommodations such as small group, having tests read to him, and re-teaching and retesting, Dante struggles to maintain passing grades. His unsatisfactory conduct (800 meets

grades have a huge impact on his success in school. 2011-2012 Grades Reading/Language Arts Reading Support Math Math Support Science Social Studies 1st Quarter/Conduct 79/U 70/U 64/U 74/U 67/S 68/S Current /Conduct 76/U 68/U 58/U 66/U 70/NI 61/NI Conduct:

Grading scale: A=90-100, B=80-89, C=73-79, D=70-72.

S=satisfactory, NI=needs improvement, U=unsatisfactory On the TOWRE (Test of Word Recognition Efficiency) Dante scored at the9th percentile for sight word recognition and at the 1st percentile

5 for phonemic decoding. His weakness in the area of word recognition

contributes greatly to his frustration level in all subjects. In math class, the students were divided into groups to work on fraction problems. There were four problems on the board and they Next they were to check the other

were to do them individually first.

students in their groups problems and try to help their peers figure out what they did wrong. In this group work situation, as in group

work as a rule, Dante did not do the problems and waited to see what answers the other students in his group got for the problems. math class he has a point sheet taped to his desk. behaviors listed on it. In his

It has three

They are: stay on task, interact He must earn at

appropriately with adults, and stay in assigned area.

least 6 out of 9 possible points to earn a reward for the class period. Since he has had the point sheet, he has only earned the

reward a few times. In language arts, the students were given an assignment that involved diagramming ten sentences that included a compound subject, compound predicate, or compound direct objects. Nothing new was

introduced in this assignment because they have been doing compound sentence parts for a month or so and have been diagramming sentences since the beginning of the year. There were three examples given and Immediately Dante started

I modeled another sentence for the class. to ask for help.

I would go to help him and he would either then

start talking to another student while I was standing there or once he started to do the sentences he actually did not need help and could

6 complete them on his own. If I was helping another student he would At the beginning of the

get impatient for me to come to help him.

year, I tried using individual tally marks for each individual student. computer. Once they earned ten marks they would get free time on the This only worked for a few students and I had to stop

instruction constantly to wait for quiet or a student out of their seat. It also caused the students who were not earning the free time

to pick on the students who did. I then decided to do the tally marks as a class. Every time I had to stop instruction the class would earn If they kept it to five or less they would all earn ten This worked immediately. If a

a tally mark.

minutes of free time on the computer.

student did not complete all of their work, they could not get on the computer. Several times Dante did not get to get on the computer

because of this. When taking a test Dante will act according to how comfortable he feels about the material or even according to what kind of mood he is in that particular day. I gave a short test on verb endings, and even

after I offered to sit with him to get him started on it he refused to complete it and threw it on the floor. Later in the class period he I gave it to him again a

said he would do it and just guessed on it.

few days later and he took it, but still did not try very hard on it and did not pass it. that day. In reading support, we were learning about elements of poetry. I showed a power point on the Smartboard. I discussed each slide and He did not get the free time on the computer

7 underlined what I wanted the students to write in their composition notebook. During this teacher presentation, Dante took all the notes

and was very concerned about making sure that he got them all done. He is usually successful with such teacher directed tasks because he doesnt have to think about what he is writing and he doesnt have to worry about getting it wrong or right. Last week we did an I Have, Who Has activity on adjectives. It involved passing out multiple cards to the students. Each one had

the answer to the previous question and then a sentence in which they had to identify the adjective. They had to all pay attention to see Dante did great on

if they had the card that had the answer on it.

this activity even prompting the other students to check their cards to see it they had the answer to the previous question. In a differentiated classroom, the teacher assumes that different learners have differing needs. Therefore, the teacher

proactively plans a variety of ways to get at and express learning (Tomlinson, 2001.) It is obvious from the previous examples, that Dante can be successful when the curriculum is differentiated and presented in different ways. The strategy of putting students in He will sit

groups to work together, however, does not work for him. by and let other students do the work for him.

He is well-liked and

looked up to by other student, so they do not seem to mind when he does this. The fact that he likes to copy notes from a power point I will also try

will be helpful to know in planning future lessons.

more games like the I Have, Who Has, which is still structured and

8 teacher led, with that group of students. Dante is such a driving

force in the two small group classes in which I teach him that it will help the class as a whole if I consider his needs when differentiating for the whole class. Rewarding Dante purely based on his own behavior or performance has not seemed to work for him in any of his classes. He gets

frustrated very easily and will just give up on his good behavior or the current task and claim that he just doesnt care. Rewarding the He seems to

class as a whole has seemed to work much better for him.

not want to let the rest of the class down or have them blame him if they dont get free time. that is six units long. In Language arts we use a scripted program

At the beginning of the year, I had to stop

instruction so often that I feared that we would never complete the program by the end of the year. Every day was frustrating until I We quickly

instituted the whole class reward of free computer time.

began to make more progress and I felt that the class was learning and absorbing more with less interruptions. I told the students when we

started getting close to the halfway mark in the program that I would bring donuts for the class when we completed it. At the end of the We spent I modeled

third unit the students had to write a personal narrative. about a week on it, from pre-writing to the final product. it from the beginning to the end.

Dante could not come up with a While everyone

topic for his story and instead tried to copy mine.

else worked on theirs, I tried to help him come up with some ideas, and he still put nothing on paper. When everyone else was finished,

they wanted to know if I was going to bring the donuts the next day.

9 I told them that they all needed to help Dante come up with an idea for his paper so that he too could finish and we could celebrate the halfway mark. When he realized that the celebration depended on him

to get his work done, he came up with a story about a particular football game that he had played in and also went back and rewrote his pre-writing to coincide with his paper. Dante plays on the Police A couple of times he

Athletic League basketball team for our school.

has had to sit out the game on the bench because of his behavior. This has seemed to help some with his classroom behavior. When it

happened the first time, he insisted that the coaches would not sit him and when they did I think that it really hit home. A time in the day when students and teacher can talk about the day, or life in general, builds bridges between learning and the world of the learner (Tomlinson 2001). Forging a positive relationship between Dante and I has been tough to do. I think that we hit a

turning point when he told me about an online video of his football game, but the site was blocked at school. it, and I came back and told him I did. and asked me questions about it. I went home and looked at

He didnt believe me at first

When I could answer him and could

talk about his game winning sack at the end of the game, he seemed very surprised that I had even watched it. I feel that the fact that

we have created some semblance of a relationship now has definitely helped improve his respect and behavior in the classroom. A lot of Dantes behavior stems from his view that some tasks are more difficult for him than others. This relates to Banduras theory

10 of self-efficacy and Dantes lack of confidence in performing a task directly affects his behavior. behaviors in school. Dante also uses a lot of avoidance

Instead of struggling to complete a task or ask

a teacher for help he will give up, walk around the room, or pick on another student. This protects his self-esteem by drawing attention

away from his lack of competence and getting attention instead for inappropriate behavior. Through attribution theory Dante will

hopefully learn that he controls the outcomes of his actions both academically and behaviorally. He needs to believe that both

consequences and rewards that he receives are related to his internal control over his success or failure in and outside of school. Choosing Dante for my case study was an easy choice. He has been

such a controlling factor in the classroom that I have had to focus on him to give the rest of the students a chance at a successful sixth grade year in my classes. I have learned a lot about extinction of I have seen a lot of teachers make

behaviors by simply ignoring them.

the mistake of battling with and constantly confronting students such as Dante. The situation usually escalates and no one wins in that situation. For example, the other day Dante took a long piece of He flattened it out, laid

butcher paper out of the recycling bin.

down on the floor, covered himself up with it, and claimed to be a bum. We were in the middle of a lesson in which the students were to

hold up a card with either short or long for the sound of the vowel in the word that I was calling out. He continued to participate from the

floor, I praised him when he was correct and within a couple of minutes he got back into his desk without any prompting. I dont

11 think that is a situation I would have dealt with as well previous to the courses in differentiation and motivation.

12 References: Anderman, E., & Anderman, L. (2010). Classroom Motivation. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Carol Ann Tomlinson. (2001). How To Differentiate Instruction in Mixed-Ability Classrooms. Alexandria, VA: ASCD