Best Effort Lesson

Every year, my third grade teachers request that I do an effort on "Best Effort". I think some of it is the teachers and their expectations and I think another part is the huge jump between 2nd and 3rd grade in regards to rigor.

I start the lesson with a super short PowerPoint walking them through different levels or degrees of effort. I currently give teachers the option between my using the "sundae" rubric or the "thermometer" rubric. For the sundae visuals, I used the images from this TPT product (but used all of my own wording to match the needs of my 3rd graders). For the thermometer visuals, I just used paint. I have the students take turns reading different parts of this to make it more engaging.

The next step is for me to get a couple volunteers to help act out a story I'm going to tell. I have a writing version and a math version (I pick depending on teacher content area when they departmentalize and class need when they are self-contained). The two student volunteers wear character signs and I try to get them to act out what I'm reading whenever possible.

After I read about how each character responded to the pretend assignment, I project their assignment (written in composition notebooks so it looks more legit) and give each table group a copy of the rubric and have them score the effort.

I ask some discussion questions once the stories are over:

• Which student does your teacher want in her class? 
• Which student will achieve their goals? 
• Which student is going to get a better job when their an adult? 
• Which student will get raises at their job?

The last piece to our lesson used to be for the students to self-evaluate their effort in class. This takes a lot of coaching! The best outcome is when the teacher joins me for this piece of the lesson to help students be more accurate. Even with examples of what best effort looks like, they still struggle to identify what they personally need to do differently in order to show more effort - they just don't have this self awareness yet. I have one self-evaluation form that I use when we think the students can truly evaluate their general effort. The other one is for specific assignments, and I ask the teachers to direct the students to pull out a very recent assignment to look at.

The truth is that nearly all of the students want good grades and to give their best effort (they don't lack the motivation), and don't struggle from fixed mindsets, they just haven't developed great schoolwork skills (reading the directions, checking work, ignoring distractions, writing multiple complete sentences, etc.) yet. This is the kind of lesson I do that is more about providing a knowledge base and common language - it takes consistent teacher reinforcement for behavior change in this arena.

***Want the PPT or electronic copy of any of these things? Leave a comment or email me!

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