3 Things I Always Say to My Students to Empower Learning

Do you find it overwhelming or just down right difficult to empower learning in your students? This is often a subject that gets overlooked and is not nearly talked about as much as it should. In this post, I’m going to share several things I always say to my students to enhance their learning experiences.

3 Things I Always Say to My Students to Empower Learning

“And what else?”

Whether they are talking about a work of art or showing me their supposedly finished work, I always ask "and what else?" They know this means what more can be said, what more can be done. There is almost always more to be said or more to be done because there is almost always room to dig deeper with their thinking.

I encourage them to enhance their work with more details or to look for additional ways they can make their work visually appealing. I encourage them to think about what else needs to be done to their own work so they can make sure they are communicating what they intend to communicate.

I ask them to tell me more about what they see in the works of others. It pushes them to use more descriptive language with a broader vocabulary. It also pushes them to notice things more intently and wonder more deeply about what they see.

"How do you know?"

When they are discussing a work of art, I expect them to be able to justify their responses just as if they were reading and discussing a written text. Here's an example I always use when I explain this to teachers. If you are viewing Van Gogh's Starry Night and a student tells you the work is about dogs howling at the moon, you will need them to provide you with more information. You don't have to tell them they are wrong. Much of art is subjective.

There are a lot of gray areas and a lot of room for interpretation. That does not mean anything goes at all times, though. It means that we can't make things up out of thin air. We justify our reasoning and analysis with the evidence. The evidence is what we see that is really there.

"Put down the glue!"

There are layers to this one. So, buckle up!

First of all, kids use so much liquid glue it is maddening. I am dead serious when I say one of my kindergarteners was working on a collage the other day and I didn't step in with my magic phrase soon enough... her paper felt like it weighed 13 pounds when she was finished. That's really not a big deal except that glue costs money. We have to budget for it. Otherwise, it really is just a developmental thing.

They eventually get to where they can control the glue flow with practice. It can also be a sensory thing with the little ones. They just want to feel it flow and watch it pool and drip. But, when I say "Put down that glue bottle" or "Put down the glue," I always say it in a silly voice. They freeze, giggle, and get the reminder that they need to slow it down with how much glue they are using.

Sometimes they just need to sit it down and pick it back up to get the feel in their muscles that they were squeezing it too hard or for too long. The other times I use this phrase are when students are collaging. They have an instinct to just start gluing things wherever they land.

I think that's probably developmental as well. They are trained to hurry up and cut the c out and glue it in front of the at on those worksheets so they can hurry up and get on to the next task. But, those worksheets aren't open ended. There's really only one place the c can go. They don't have to carefully consider it as much as they do when they create a new work of art. So, you have to teach them to think about the composition before they start gluing. That's why I say, "Put down the glue." They need to arrange their elements and think about where things should go before the glue ever comes out. Just put down the glue, folks, and make sure you are satisfied with the way it looks. If they skip this step, they are very unlikely to be happy with their final product.

(Here's a quick tip on this: If you have some students who struggle to remember where things go when they do finally start gluing, let them take a pic of it all put together and use it as a reference. That is, if you have devices they can use in your classroom. Otherwise, encourage them to lift one piece at a time and glue it without removing all the pieces.)

Final Thoughts

I always tell teachers to not overthink of ways to empower learning in their students. Keep it short, sweet, and to the point. Repeat things often so they become familiar with what you expect and you - on the other hand - will see the results sooner than later. What are some things you say to your student to empower learning?