High school students are qualitatively different from younger students. You can certainly “teach an old dog new tricks” by understanding the cognitive and social characteristics of high school students. Using the right instructional strategies to maximize learning advantages and address learning challenges for high school students can make all the difference in their success.
High School Cognitive Development
Most high school students have reached the formal operational stage, as described by Piaget. These students can think abstractly and need fewer concrete examples to understand complex thought patterns. Generally speaking, most students share the following characteristics:
- Need to understand the purpose and relevance of instructional activities.
- Are both internally and externally motivated
- He has self-imposed cognitive barriers due to years of academic failure and lack of self-confidence.
- You may have “shut down” in certain cognitive areas and will need to learn how to learn and overcome these barriers to learning.
- You want to set immediate and long-term personal goals.
- Wants to take individual responsibility for learning and progress toward goals
High School Social Development
High school students are experimenting with adult relationships. Generally speaking, most students share the following characteristics:
- Interested in mixed activities.
- Desire adult leadership roles and autonomy in planning
- They want adults to take a primarily supportive role in their education
- Develop a community awareness
- Needs opportunities for self-expression
high school
Instruction Strategies
To address the special learning needs of students of this age, Teaching reading strategies uses student goal setting and record keeping. Students take responsibility for their own monitoring of progress. For example, high-interest animal fluency passages provide opportunities for students to keep records and monitor progress.
High school students are still concerned about the labeling that occurs when one identifies as a remedial reader. Labels and stereotypes are imposed externally (by other students and sometimes their parents), but they are mainly imposed internally (by the students themselves). Years of academic failure, due to lack of reading proficiency, have damaged students’ self-esteem. Many students have lost confidence in their ability to learn. Students have developed coping mechanisms, such as reading survival skills, for example, audio books or peer/parent readers, or problem behaviors, or the “Whatever…I don’t care” attitudes to avoid the hard work of learning to read well. . Secondary teachers must be extremely aware of students’ self-perceptions. Some talking points may be helpful:
- “Unfortunately, some of your previous reading instruction was poor; it’s not your fault you have some skills to work on.” aka “blame someone else”
- “You can learn in this class. If you come to class willing to try every day, you will improve your reading significantly, I promise you.”
- “I know you’ve tried before, but this time it’s different.”
- “You will be able to chart your own progress and see what you are learning in this class.”
- “Some of my former students were just like some of you. For example, ___________ and he passed the high school exit exam after finishing this class. For example, ___________ met his grade level in reading and is now in college”. Personal anecdotes provide role models and hope for recovering high school readers. Any successful alumni will bring “street cred” to the teacher and the class.
- “You’re not in this class forever. As soon as you master the skills you lack, you’re out.”