Challenge 3: Quality vs Quantity

How good does it need to be?

Some children master doing the bare minimum very early in life. Motivating children to go beyond that and try to challenge themselves or test out what they're capable of can be very difficult and is a true art for teachers. For these children it can be achievable to get them to do more but getting them to do better is a whole different ball game.

At the other end of the spectrum, some children suffer from perfectionist paralysis. Children who refuse to produce anything that is less than 101% perfect will often struggle to make a start and if they do it can be excruciating watching them work. These children carry erasers and white out with them as a crutch, stabilising them every time they stumble. 

Regardless of where your child sits on this continuum, many parents will be surprised/shocked/horrified/amazed at how your children go about their school work. As a teacher, there are particular students who never cease to stun you with how little they manage to produce, despite you checking in with them at frequent intervals. 

For some parents, you will see a task set by the teacher and assume your child would complete it in a reasonable time frame, perhaps 20 to 30 minutes. For some students, this will be true. For others, in the classroom, it is not uncommon for children to procrastinate endlessly until the final 5-10 minutes when the threat of staying in over lunch becomes increasingly real and they finally get going. 

If you are waiting for your child to complete every task to their full potential, you may be waiting a long time. This is the balance teachers juggle every day: How hard do I push this child to do more or do better as opposed to letting them flounder and face the consequences? There are limits to what is possible and some children will test those limits completely. 

It is not a bad thing for students to face up to the consequences of producing poor work in the time given: if something is a 15 minute task yet it takes them 55 minutes to produce a rubbish response, submitting this and seeing the poor feedback or assessment can sometimes help. At school this happens frequently - we can't afford to wait forever for a child to do everything on their own terms. That is not how anyone works, and is not a blueprint for success in any field. Being able to focus and reproduce your best efforts when required is a skill and we should encourage students to develop and grow this capacity. 

What should I do?

- If your child can't get started because the work is too hard or they don't understand it, contact the teacher in the window and request assistance. 

- If your child isn't getting started because they are getting distracted, try removing those distractions. Many children will be struggling with staying focused in one app and may be jumping between apps - it is possible to lock in a particular app for a set period of time to prevent this from happening. Other distractions, such as siblings or environmental sounds like a TV or music, may be fixed with a change of location. 

- Perfectionism can be a curse that can become paralysing. Helping children identify what success looks like for that task (use the teacher's Success Criteria) tells a student what is most important that day. Help students identify how they will check the things they are worried about getting wrong. For many students, this can be spelling or calculations. Agreeing on a procedure for when they are finished so they can go back and check for errors can help them get started. In the classroom, some students are encouraged to 'have a go' and underline words they're unsure about so they can go back and check later. This is also a good 'accountability measure' for students who rush work, forcing them to consider accuracy and quality before submitting.

What should I avoid?

- There's no point allowing it to stretch out over hours. Set a reasonable time on a timer and when it goes off, move on. No task on a single day should take a child of any age more than 45 minutes. Similarly, no task done properly should be finished in 30 seconds.

- Having a massive fight over poor quality work is unlikely to inspire better results next time. Praise when students perform as expected, and ensure they take ownership of the results when they seriously under-perform - an unfinished, poor quality piece of work is the child's fault, not yours. Let them try to justify to the teacher why they thought it was suitable. 

- Don't reinforce perfectionist behaviour. If a child has spent far too long completing work and agonised over elements of it, don't praise this. You don't need to criticise it but instead look to praise other work done independently, efficiently and to a good standard. Alternatively, praise elements of the work that helped meet the success criteria or show achievement of the learning intention for that task. Often, it is because of the work adults publicly praise that students become negative or extremely sensitive about subjects. Think about what gets displayed on the fridge or discussed at the kitchen table... What habits are you reinforcing? What learning are you prioritising? 

One way to think about this is to consider a piece of artwork for a young child: 

- if you praise a child extensively for colouring in the lines, they may not risk going outside the lines or trying something different

- if you praise a child for their 'natural creativity' they may not know how to ever re-produce this and do the same thing again and again

- if you praise a child for how they matched colours or used a particular technique, they know what to keep doing next time and are motivated to find other new ways to impress you.