Some Practical Ideas For Sustaining Motivation
Some practical ideas for sustaining motivation
1 Experiment, take risks. Vary the kinds of things you do in the classroom. See what different students respond to best. For example, try short stories, films, classroom drama, songs, projects, grammar exercises, dictations,…
2 Choose ‘larger’ tasks. Chose tasks that give students more ‘psychological space’ to plan their own work, set their own pace, make their own decisions about how and what they do. For example, process writing and simulations.
3 Choose open-ended tasks. Tasks that different people can respond to in different ways, where the absence of a ‘single right answer’ means that everybody’s work can be valued. For example, making posters, writing poems, creating designs and describing them.
4 Provide choice. If people are involved in deciding what to do, they are usually more committed to it. Instead of saying ‘do this’, say ‘you can choose exercise 3, 5 or 9. Or if you’d like to do something else, ask me.’
5 Involve students in classroom decision-making. Many of the decisions that teachers make can often be shared with the students, without any risks to the course as whole. You might be able to share decisions about when homework is set, how long they will spend on a particular task, what they will do next lesson, and so on.
6 Find out what students think. Find out if students think they need more practice, if they have suggestions of their own, if they find things easy or difficult, boring or interesting. You could place a ‘suggestion box’ in your class, or write an open-ended letter that students could complete with their ideas, or devise short questionnaires.
7 Think about how you give feedback and what you give feedback on. If you can identify students who are beginning to sink, try to identify aspects that you can praise and encourage. Instead of just giving a low mark, explain to the students, in concrete terms, what they could do to improve it next time.
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1 Experiment, take risks. Vary the kinds of things you do in the classroom. See what different students respond to best. For example, try short stories, films, classroom drama, songs, projects, grammar exercises, dictations,…
2 Choose ‘larger’ tasks. Chose tasks that give students more ‘psychological space’ to plan their own work, set their own pace, make their own decisions about how and what they do. For example, process writing and simulations.
3 Choose open-ended tasks. Tasks that different people can respond to in different ways, where the absence of a ‘single right answer’ means that everybody’s work can be valued. For example, making posters, writing poems, creating designs and describing them.
4 Provide choice. If people are involved in deciding what to do, they are usually more committed to it. Instead of saying ‘do this’, say ‘you can choose exercise 3, 5 or 9. Or if you’d like to do something else, ask me.’
5 Involve students in classroom decision-making. Many of the decisions that teachers make can often be shared with the students, without any risks to the course as whole. You might be able to share decisions about when homework is set, how long they will spend on a particular task, what they will do next lesson, and so on.
6 Find out what students think. Find out if students think they need more practice, if they have suggestions of their own, if they find things easy or difficult, boring or interesting. You could place a ‘suggestion box’ in your class, or write an open-ended letter that students could complete with their ideas, or devise short questionnaires.
7 Think about how you give feedback and what you give feedback on. If you can identify students who are beginning to sink, try to identify aspects that you can praise and encourage. Instead of just giving a low mark, explain to the students, in concrete terms, what they could do to improve it next time.
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