Section 5 - Chapter 8 - How Can I Help Slow Learners?

Willingham starts off the chapter with the million dollar question: “How can school be optimized for students who don’t have the raw intelligence that other students have?” The chapter is then written with the principle that “children do differ in intelligence, but intelligence can be changed through sustained hard work.”

Willingham explains the theories of what makes people intelligent. It comes back to the old debate of nature (genetic) vs. nurture (experience). Willingham explains that the thought process in the past was that it was probably both, but mostly genetic. In recent years, that has changed to both, but mostly environmental. He shared some of the results from many tests done on both identical and fraternal twins. It was determined that “genetics seems to play a huge role in general intelligence; that is, our genes seem to be responsible for something like 50 percent of our smarts.” Other aspects were that when twins were separated and placed in a home with greater means, the intelligence level increased but the effect was usually small. He goes on to share a study done in 1982 where intelligence scores went up 21 IQ points. They realized that this had to be more environmental than genetics because a genetic pool doesn’t change that quickly. However, this still didn’t fit with the results from the twins study. He gave the example of twins that were separated but genetically tall. Because of their genetics, there was an interest in basketball for both of them. In both cases, each twin asked parents for basketball things. As a result, they practiced and both of their skills improved. It was concluded that their genetics led them to an environment that included basketball. “Genetic effects can make you seek out or select different environments.” “The key idea here is that genetics and the environment interact. Small differences in genetic inheritance can steer people to seek different experiences in their environments, and it is differences in these environmental experiences, especially over the long term, that have large cognitive consequences.”

Willingham believes that “intelligence can be changed.” He is quick to point out that this isn’t something that can be fixed quickly, but rather over time. He then concludes the chapter with things that we can do in our classroom to help the slow learners.
• Praise Effort, Not Ability - He encourages us to encourage them that intelligence is under their control and can be increased by hard work. He cautions us about dishonest praise.
• Tell Them That Hard Work Pays Off – We need to remind students that the students who do well in school are the ones that work hard and put forth the effort.
• Treat Failure as a Natural Part of Learning – We need to create an environment in our classrooms that makes it ok for students to fail and to teach them that by failing, they are ready to learn.
• Don’t Take Study Skills for Granted – We need to remember that as students continue in their education and that things become more independent that they may not know how to study or manage their time.
• Catching Up is the Long-Term Goal – Remind them that to catch up they must work harder than the brighter students. It is also wise to set up goals that they can reach in a shorter amount of time and to get the help of parents.
• Show Students That You Have Confidence in Them – Set high standards and then praise them when those standards are met. When we praise work that isn’t up to par, we lower our standards for them.