Top 12 Ways to Motivate Students

 

 

If there is one thing we know about kids, it’s that they have short attention spans and prefer now to later. Teachers, more than any district or schoolwide programs, have the most power to motivate students because they’re on the front lines. They can influence students in a way that kids can actually understand: here, now, today, in this room.

***Obviously, not enough can be said about parent involvement, but that’s a Top 12 list for another day***

In Your Classroom or School

1. Praise Students in Ways Big and Small

Recognize work in class, display good work in the classroom and send positive notes home to parents, hold weekly awards in your classroom, organize academic pep rallies to honor the honor roll, and even sponsor a Teacher Shoutout section in the student newspaper to acknowledge student’s hard work.

2. Expect Excellence

Set high, yet realistic expectations. Make sure to voice those expectations. Set short terms goals and celebrate when they are achieved.

3. Spread Excitement Like a Virus

Show your enthusiasm in the subject & use appropriate, concrete and understandable examples to help students grasp it. For example, I love alliteration. Before I explain the concept to students, we “improv” subjects they’re interested in. After learning about alliteration, they brainstorm alliterative titles for their chosen subjects.

4. Mix It Up

It’s a classic concept and the basis for differentiated instruction, but it needs to be said: using a variety of teaching methods caters to all types of learners. By doing this in an orderly way, you can also maintain order in your classroom. In a generic example for daily instruction, journal for 10 minutes to open class; introduce the concept for 15 minutes; discuss/group work for 15 minutes; Q&A or guided work time to finish the class. This way, students know what to expect everyday and have less opportunity to act up.

5. Assign Classroom Jobs

With students, create a list of jobs for the week. Using the criteria of your choosing, let students earn the opportunity to pick their classroom jobs for the next week. These jobs can cater to their interests and skills. Some possibilities include:

• Post to the Class blog

• Update Calendar

• Moderate review games

• Pick start of class music

• Watch class pet

• Public relations officer (address people who visit class)

• Standard class jobs like Attendance, Cleaning the boards, putting up chairs, etc.

6. Hand Over Some Control

If students take ownership of what you do in class, then they have less room to complain (though we all know, it’ll never stop completely). Take an audit of your class, asking what they enjoy doing, what helps them learn, what they’re excited about after class. Multiple choice might be the best way to start if you predict a lot of “nothing” or “watch movies” answers.

After reviewing the answers, integrate their ideas into your lessons or guide a brainstorm session on how these ideas could translate into class.

On a systematic level, let students choose from elective classes in a collegiate format. Again, they can tap into their passion and relate to their subject matter if they have a choice.

7. Open-format Fridays

You can also translate this student empowerment into an incentive program. Students who attended class all week, completed all assignments and obeyed all classroom rules can vote on Friday’s activities (lecture, discussion, watching a video, class jeopardy, acting out a scene from a play or history).

8. Relating Lessons to Students’ Lives

Whether it is budgeting for family Christmas gifts, choosing short stories about your town, tying in the war of 1812 with Iraq, rapping about ions, or using Pop Culture Printables, students will care more if they identify themselves or their everyday lives in what they’re learning.

9. Track Improvement

In those difficult classes, it can feel like a never-ending uphill battle, so try to remind students that they’ve come a long way. Set achievable, short-term goals, emphasis improvement, keep self-evaluation forms to fill out and compare throughout the year, or revisit mastered concepts that they once struggled with to refresh their confidence.

10. Reward Positive Behavior Outside the Classroom

Tie service opportunities, cultural experiences, extracurricular activities into the curriculum for extra credit or as alternative options on assignments. Have students doing Habitat for Humanity calculate the angle of the freshly cut board, count the nails in each stair and multiply the number of stairs to find the total number of nails; write an essay about their experience volunteering or their how they felt during basketball tryouts; or any other creative option they can come up with.

Beyond the Classroom

The idea of cash incentives is a timely yet controversial topic, so I’d like to look at this attempt to “buy achievement” through a different lens. It seems people are willing to dump some money into schools, so let’s come up with better ways to spend it.

11. Plan Dream Field Trips

With your students, brainstorm potential field trips tiered by budget. Cash incentive money can then be earned toward the field trips for good behavior, performance, etc. The can see their success in the classroom as they move up from the decent zoo field trip to the good state capitol day trip to the unbelievable week-long trip to New York City. Even though the reward is delayed, tracking progress will give students that immediate reward.

12. College Fund Accounts

College dreams motivate athletes; why not adapt the academic track to be just as tangible for hard-working student. One way is to keep a tally of both the cash value and the potential school choice each student has earned. As freshman, they see they’ve earned one semester at the local junior college. By second semester of junior year, they’re going to four-years at State for half the price. By graduation, watch out free ride to their dream school.

tesol training australia – Australian tesol institute provides the TESOL certificate course online to people all over the world. Learn how to teach conversational English, tesol courses, TEFL & Tesol programs.

Multilingual Jobs Recruitment – Find your best bilingual, multilingual employment jobs at Bilingual Recruitment agencies for executive and management in UK.

Masters in Communication | Mass Communication Institutes – Mass Communication : Bizedia is a perfect place  where you can get information about mass communication institute, institute of mass communication, mass communication colleges, mass communication courses.

Mass Communication Institutes Delhi – Mass Communication Delhi : Bizedia is a perfect place  where you can get information about  mass communication institute, institute of mass communication, mass communication colleges, mass communication courses based at Delhi.

ISO 9001 | Traductor de inglés a español – Traductores especializados en el campo de la traducción de inglés a español. Traductor de inglés a español para libros, traducciones técnicas, traducción médica y traducción de páginas web.

curso ingles irlanda| Face Painting Calgary – Fantasy Faces is a family owned and operated business based in Calgary. We provide excellent quality and creative face painting for birthday parties, theme parties, dance performances, grand openings, promotions, community and/or corporate events. We specialize in face painting, our face painters are best in Calgary. Henna tattoos or mehndi art best in Calgary. Airbrush, nail art and glitter tattoos is a few more creative services we offer in Calgary.

Local Job Search – Local Job Search – Search local jobs including full time jobs, part time jobs, office jobs, retail jobs and recruitment jobs in India.

Debt Consolidation – Need to consolidate debts? Been turned down for finance in the past? That’s OK, Debt Fix can help.

hr courses | Jaspal Bhatti Film School – Mad Arts is a premier institute for learning the visual and performing arts and offers professional courses in the exciting fields of ACTING, DIRECTION, CAMERA AND LIGHTING, EDITING, RADIO JOCKEYING and 3D ANIMATION located in Mohali.

Offshore company formation – SFM online price list for an offshore company formation together with annual nominal fees. Setup an offshore company in Seychelles, Mauritius company and many other places.

Online Ordinations – Online Ordinations – if you are worried about the many different ordination websites, make the correct decision today and join ministerialseminary.com for ordination. Get complete satisfaction of perfect ordination with online ordinations at ministerialseminary.com.

Sales Jobs – Sales jobs, jobs in Sales – Search thousands of Sales jobs, jobs in Sales.  Submit your CV to our database and let the Sales jobs, jobs in Sales offers roll in!

Logistics Recruiter – We provide quality-assured recruiting strategies and services across the entire supply chain industry. We assist our clients in identifying and delivering the best-qualified individuals.

canada work visa |   reputation monitor | ptlls | VMWare Training Classes – Everything VMWare Training and Certification Related.

Psychic Medium Telephone Readings & Tarot Card Readings -  Psychic Readings UK are a leading psychic telephone service with professional psychic and clairvoyant readers  available 24 hours a day – offering accurate and sincere spiritual guidance.

Cigarette-Electronique – Free online legal help – led lights for kitchens – led wall wash – led strip lighting – led lighting – electronic production – led lights for bedrooms -  rgb led lighting |  | law firm marketing | Funeral Planning | system integration | Buy Ugg Boots | Learn English in Vancouver | personal loans Derby

If you are one of the few people who have made the decision to drink and drive or drive while having a suspended license, definitely be prepared for high car insurance in Ontario for their rates. They will double, triple or quadruple. Insurance companies frown upon these types of infractions, and rightfully so. It is estimated that someone with a DUI conviction will pay an additional $1500.00 per year on their insurance. These rates typically continue for 3-5 years.

Learn Spanish grammar – Our interactive lessons guarantees you a modern and effective methodology of learning Spanish.

Senior Advice Online Senior Life provides extensive free advice for the over 50 & senior age group, including advice on housing options, pension credit, care homes, state benefits, means tested benefits, pre state pension age benefits, tv licence concessions, the social fund, housing benefit, council tax benefit, retirement, health & hobbies.

farms for sale  – Find or post a horse job at the world’s fastest growing equine industry employment website. List a position or even yourself and search for FREE, today!

start painting -  Express your paint creativity with cambridge art academy .Learn paint in few time. Visit our site for more information