Know-it-all Student
"This kid has all of the answers and you get to hear them."
Technique: The initial impulse is to put the person in his or her place. Do just the opposite. This type of behavior is most often the result of intense feelings of inadequacy which are masked by focusing on intellectual prowess.
Procedures: Give this student praise for correctness and allow latitude for success. When possible, implement rules of social recognition that help the student see others can also be right. Provide opportunities for feelings of genuine regard to be shared, apart from the prowess of the mind or verbal skills. With those who are mature enough to understand, explain the social dynamics of self-control for the good of the group and teach methods for receiving group approval. All of these things will assist in deferring some of the pressure such a student is feeling in the search for peer acceptance and approval of personhood, not just the brain.
Assists to use until student is able to better control verbalization:
- Use cooperative learning to dilute the influence of a highly verbal student.
- Teach the student to keep a response journal and talk one to one about material that is written.
- Explore individual reading and research which will divert the student during lecture material and provide others with participation time.
- Pass out tokens for talking and have students give them up with each response and then wait until all students have responded twice before allowing additional comments.
- Use a Dialogist style of teaching (Content, four teaching styles) to teach self monitoring of shared discussion.
- Agree on a nonverbal signal to alert the student to over zealous participation.
- Consider starting a debate club as a part of the class to provide verbal students with more focus and discipline in argument.
When asking a student to change the way that needs are being met, remember
to tread softly and find ways to support the student and find fulfillment.
When the adult loses sight of the student as a human being, when the
adult fails to gather in the child's presence as a person, there is no
reality between them, there is no relationship. There is no mutuality.
And this is what happens in many situations where potential growth and
love exist between persons. The persons are lost. The discrepancy or issue
becomes all that matters. And the loudest voice, the strongest figure,
the person in authority carries out the office of command. Gradually the
student is forced into a process of desensitization where feelings and
senses are muffled and subdued until eventually the child is no longer
aware that there is no sensing from within. - Moustakas
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