Being committed to one's education and development is essential to student accountability. Throughout their careers, teachers have devised various strategies to hold students accountable. However, everything was upset in March 2020 by the COVID-19 epidemic, which co-occurred. The best practices that teachers had come to know we're not always effective in the virtual and hybrid learning environments; therefore, it was necessary to reinvent a part of the wheel and figure out exactly how to reach kids and make them desire to do well in a time that had never been seen before.
The Importance of Student Accountability lies in the fact that it inspires students to accept personal responsibility for their learning and behavior. Students learn to respect their work, which most likely increases their confidence. Students are better prepared for life after high school, whether they continue their education, enter the workforce, or mix the two. Students develop into more well-rounded people when they are instilled with the importance of accountability at an early age. This value follows them throughout their life and contributes to their development.
How to Encourage Students to Take Accountability for Their Conduct
1. Create a learning environment "just right."
To put it another way, a "just right" learning environment is one in which the conditions are ideal for your students. Pupils must have a sense of belonging at every age or grade level. Your classroom will function smoothly if your pupils accept responsibility for their activities and behavior. In a safe, trusting, and respectful classroom, children are more likely to take responsibility for their actions, not just their teachers but their peers and themselves.
2. Specific goals and objectives
When it comes to holding students accountable for their learning and their tasks, having clear expectations is vital. In addition to providing students with verbal directions for their studies, students must also have clear written rules to follow. This will guarantee that students fully comprehend what is expected of them. Students may find it helpful to create rubrics for projects, tests, and writing pieces to grasp better what is expected of them in their assignments.
Due dates are incredibly essential! Students can better manage their time and keep on top of their work thanks to the due dates that Google Classroom provides for all their virtual and hybrid learning experiences. To be able to hold students accountable and for students to hold themselves responsible, having clear expectations not only provides the support from the teacher that is necessary to ensure student growth and achievement at any grade level, but it also plays a big part in being able to hold students accountable.
3. Encourage pupils to take responsibility for their education
When students come up with stupid excuses like, "Well, my parents didn't put the assignment in my bookbag" or "You didn't tell me I needed to do this," as teachers, we have all heard them. These are unacceptable reasons for students not to complete their assignments. It is essential to involve students in the decision-making process regarding their education. The students have to take responsibility for their education and participate actively in the decisions that are made regarding it.
At any age, making mistakes is one of the most effective ways to gain knowledge. Learning can come from mistakes, and when students take responsibility for their education, they set themselves up for success in the classroom and in their social and emotional lives. Students will feel more responsible for themselves, which is necessary to grow accountability.
4. The section about how well you know yourself
Learning relies heavily on reflective evaluations of one's performance. Students need to evaluate their performance and identify the areas in which they excel as well as those in which they struggle. At a young age, self-evaluation can be as straightforward as an emoji worksheet, in which the student circles the emoji that best represents how they feel about the effort they put into a task.
The thumbs-up or thumbs-down method is yet another easy way to evaluate oneself. Using this method, you may quickly determine how well the students in the class comprehend a particular idea or ability. Students are better able to be held accountable for their performance. You can give students in upper elementary school on up through high school self-reflection questionnaires to complete out following significant examinations or marking periods to assist students in setting objectives and determining whether or not those goals have been fulfilled.
5. Support Families
It is more crucial than ever to provide financial assistance to families. For there to be an increase in the overall success and student achievement, the parents and guardians of the students need to feel that the teachers support them. It is of the utmost importance to forging a solid connection between the work settings of the classroom and the home.
It is essential to each student's performance and the school's success that the proper support is put in place for both the students and their families, as this helps to obtain approval from families in the area of student responsibility. In my classroom, I have seen students who have involved families and those whose families have not been involved in their successes and achievements.
6. Conferences with the students, their parents, and their teachers
A fantastic strategy for boosting accountability is maintaining open lines of contact with students and giving them a more prominent voice in the educational choices they face. The traditional parent-teacher conference has recently been given a new spin by including the students in the discussion.
These are essential conversations, and students' involvement may shine a new light on certain aspects of particular circumstances. It's all about how you look at things; various people could have very different perspectives on the same circumstance. Engage children in finding solutions to problems and assist them in acquiring that sense of ownership over themselves.
As teachers, we are responsible for inspiring pupils' interest in attending class. The first step in holding students accountable is ensuring that they make it through the day, whether that day takes place in real life or online. Students will learn a significant amount about a wide variety of essential life skills, including time management, self-management, and applying skills to the actual world, primarily due to this component. Maintaining their degree of accountability and, as a result, their success is dependent on their continued participation in all of the processes.
Signing Off
You should be able to complete each of these activities using a reflection journal and materials lying around the classroom. However, if you want some of the work done for you, including Google Slides, for use when students are remote from the school, you can check out the Responsibility theme unit created.
You have found the right site to improve your social and emotional concentration, so congratulations: you've arrived at the appropriate destination! This unit is mainly used for morning meeting that lasts between two and three weeks. It includes student journal sheets, thorough and editable lesson plans, materials for bulletin boards with language connected to thankfulness, and relevant quotations, as well as Google Slides for the instructor and a digital student notebook. This unit's subject matter is also contained within the Morning Meeting MEGA Bundle, a collection of 17 social and emotional topics.
Author Bio:
Scott Bowen
Scott Bowen is an exceptional content writer and tech enthusiast. He has written on multiple niches. However, he does limit himself in a vacuum. Instead, he takes every new subject as a challenge and accomplishes tasks after doing profound research.