T H O U G H T S
So many students utter these words, "I can't do this,  this is too hard, I don't know how to do this, I was never taught this before" etc....  They receive the instructions, either they listened or didn't bother to listen and now they have the paper of the assignment in front of them and they "freeze".  They see that their classmates are diligently working away and they have NOT even attempted to do anything.  They have these negative thoughts going on in their heads that are preventing them from doing their work.  The more negative their thoughts the harder it becomes for the thought process to work.  They become frustrated, their thoughts do not flow out freely, and that causes more mistakes.  I like to try to erase the negativity as much as possible and just do as much praising as possible and stay away with criticizing remarks.