How Does The Star Challenges System Work?
The number of stars is a measure of the difficulty of the Challenge. So, one star denotes a fairly easy challenge. However, students should not be discouraged from attempting any Challenges. For example, students may earn fewer stars from many two or three star challenges, with partially correct answers. Students of lower ability can amaze you, if they really want to tackle problems you might think beyond them.
What do schools do with the stars students earn for Star Challenges?
One school:
• gives a house point for each star
• has a commendation system and awards a commendation for so many stars.
They also award stars for effort when the books are taken in each fortnight.
• gives a smiley face for 5 stars
• gives a Mars Bar for 10 stars
• gives a copy of one of a group of Chaos posters for 20 stars (very popular with low attainers)
It doesn't matter what you do. It is the sense of achievement that is most important. However, a system that awards something for so many stars, then gets them collecting the next set of stars, means that students keep track of how many stars they have and how many more they need towards the next 'prize' - instead of (possibly invidious) comparisons of the total number of stars each student has.
A True Cautionary Tale
Three very low ability students were working together. They had to.
Mark was severely dyslexic - he could not read at all. Jason could read very well,
but could make no sense of what he was reading. Matthew was very slow at everything.
Jason would read the question. Mark would explain what it was about.
Together the three of them would work out how to solve the problem.
One day they had done all the one star problems. They asked me if they could try the
three star problem - The Chest of Drawers. It contained a mixture of fractions and decimals
and both cm and mm. My first reaction was to tell them that it was too difficult for them but I said that they could try it, provided they accepted that they might not be able to do it.
About ten minutes later, they brought me the correct answer. I couldn't believe that they had
solved such a complex problem. I changed the data (marked in blue).
They were back a few minutes later with the correct answer.
From then on I never restricted the choice of Star Challenges of even the least able students.