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Do you think that naughty students may be helpful in classes?

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Question added by Ahmed Gendy , English Senior Inspector , Ministry of Education (MoE)
Date Posted: 2014/03/19
Hedi Charfi
by Hedi Charfi , Teaching Assistant , Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, University of Sfax

Naughty students are often very energetic as they try to pay attention to several things at the same time. This prevents them from focussing on the lesson since they find everything around them interesting and hence fail at channelling their attention. Naughty students are generally attention-seekers who want to channel their peers' attention towards them. We often say that naughty students fail at paying attention whereas it is more accurate to say that they fail at NOT paying attention (to distractions).

 

It is therefore the role of the instructor to channel students' attention to help them focus on the lesson. It is first of all possible to involve the naughty students into daily classroom routines (e.g. distributing handouts). This helps them focus the extra energy they have and focus on doing something related to the lesson rather than something to divert attention. It is also a good idea to involve the naughty students when eliciting activity feedback. This makes sure that the student tries to complete the activity more efficiently since his/her "public" image is at stake and s/he would want to always look smart. If this is done effectively, the "previously naughty" student can be assigned more leading roles within group-work and can enrich the lesson through making use of the creativity potential they have.

 

So, the key word here is inclusion rather than exclusion. The more the naughty student is included in the lesson, the less time and energy s/he would waste doing naughty random behaviour to attract his/her peers. In fact, naughty students can be top-achievers if supported adequately.

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