Classroom

My wife works with children with disabilities. Recently, she attended a seminar which I find worthy of sharing. The facilitator showed a picture with some dots to a participant and asked what it was. After some hesitation, the participant said, “A frog?”
The facilitator moved on to another pupil who did not venture an answer, then the next, also no answer and then the next. When no one wanted to try, he put a small piece of chocolate on the table and declare it as a reward for the right answer.
There were some excitement but it quickly die down. Every time the excitement went down, the facilitator would increase the prize by adding one more sweet. Finally, he offered the entire box. By then, the whole class was filled with people shouting their answers. Mind you, this is a group of highly educated people. The correct answer was eventually given by a young engineer.
What is the lesson? The first person to which the question was directed at, felt a lot of pressure. The take away is to avoid asking difficult question to weak students first otherwise we are setting them up for failure. A sweet or two did not motivate the students. The reward seen through the eyes of the pupils must be proportional to the effort that they have to put in. No matter what the prize is, some people just cannot see it. We need to show them instead of testing them.