When you call a child’s name for intervention and you see their shoulders slump and reluctance in their eyes, you know something needs to change.

Children can sometimes interpret interventions as failing at a task or not being good enough. It can damage their self-esteem and push them down the reluctant learner path. We explore how to engage children in primary school interventions, transforming them into eager beavers.

Why can some pupils be reluctant to engage with interventions in school?  

There are lots of factors that can make children not want to participate in interventions:

• Feeling like they are missing out: if their intervention slot always clashes with their favourite foundation subject, they can become resentful towards the interventions.
• Lack of motivation: you leave the classroom environment to sit alone and match the grapheme to the phoneme… thrilling! A lack of motivation to learn and nail a target can increase reluctance.
• Feeling overwhelmed: they’ve slogged at the learning skill for an hour this morning, to then go and tackle it again in the afternoon? No thanks! Feelings of overwhelm due to concepts that are too difficult can impact a pupil’s self-esteem.
• Dull topic content: it can be hard to make all content fun; dry topic content can discourage active intervention participation.

4 steps to engage pupils with interventions in primary school:

So, how can we turn children into intervention eager beavers? We want children who volunteer themselves, willing to work hard because they are excited. 

1. Use high-quality resources.

The first step is to use intervention resources that are interesting, easy to use and reduce cognitive overload. The resources of choice should be linked with previous learning, helping to build those connections between topics. Activities that are not appropriate for children's level of learning will disengage your learner no matter how interesting they are! Engaging content at an appropriate learning level is a necessary combination for a successful intervention.

These children who were normally disengaged were asking to take the activities home.

Year 2 Teaching Assistant, St Mary and St Margaret’s C of E Primary on Shine Interventions.

Read more about pupil engagement in our Impact Study.

2. Choose the right length of time.

How long is too long for interventions? It depends on the frequency of the sessions, the number of pupils in the groups and, of course, the concentration levels of the pupils. Having resources pre-prepared for you saves time setting up, planning, and organising resources for the session. 15-30 minutes is an ideal length of time for a key stage 2 intervention session.

3. Get the discussion flowing.

Discussion helps to process and sort information, making the content learnt more likely to be moved from working memory into long-term memory.  Choose intervention resources that promote discussions through questioning. Shine provides all the prompting questioning for each session for you to remove any additional planning needed whilst boosting pupil enjoyment.

4. Give thoughtful feedback.

Interventions can boost pupil knowledge but can also be an excellent tool to build those independent application skills so many pupils lack (especially post-lockdown). By encouraging the children to review and monitor their own progress via quizzes, they can receive immediate feedback on their learning. Don’t forget to regularly praise the learning efforts rather than the outcome, giving positive feedback for resilience, determination and hard work.

Primary school interventions are designed to boost targeted skills and knowledge. Choosing an exciting whole-school intervention programme can transform your reluctant learners into eager beavers.

Contact one of the Shine team today for your free demo and school trial. There’s a reason we were shortlisted for the 2022 Bett Awards for assessment, planning and progress monitoring!

A motivation problem?

It could be the case that you are struggling to engage unmotivated pupils in a much larger scale, noticing poor attitudes to learning among a number of pupils in your year group or school. Our research shows that academic wellbeing has dropped in England since 2018, impacting children's motivation, positivity, resilience and self-efficacy. All of these impact a child's desire and ability to participate in school.

Monitor your pupils' attitudes to learning and support their academic wellbeing using evidence-based strategies with Wellbeing and Attitudes to Learning: Survey and Strategies.

Guest writer Louise Jackson has over 8 years of teaching and leadership experience in mainstream and SEND specialist schools. Find her on LinkedIn.