Since most of my students are not college bound, I am trying new ways to motivate them to do work and want to love learning. My girls will get through high school and then get married. My boys will go onto Rabbinical school. With this being said, the girls just want to get through high school and the boys are more focused on their Judaic studies classes.
According to Barbara Gross Davis, she stated that one of the ways to motivate your students is to, "Help students find personal meaning and value in the material." As a general studies teacher (English and History) I constantly battle the kids for their attention and the want to learn the subjects I am teaching. I try to make real life connections everyday. We watch the CNN Student News Podcast everyday. I really find it important for them to connect to the outside world that they are very sheltered from.
At the start of our second semester, I decided to put my history classes into groups(they are my biggest classes of 8 and 12). We are a small private school and our classes are divided by gender, just an fyi. I then gave out team points each day as a motivation to keep their team members on task. The reward: five points of extra credit o the next chapter test for the winning group. I was very excited that this was working!!! I also came up with a lot more group work for the students to do. It was awesome to see some leaders emerge out of each group.
I read a great article online titled: Six Ways to Motivate Students to Learn. One of the ways to motivate students is to make things social in the classroom. We all know that our students like to chat and work with each other. I like to do activities called jigsaw. I will make each person an expert on a different section of the worksheet. The experts will all meet together and then they will go back and teach their group what they learned. I found this a great way to have the students work on so many different skills, yet it also makes it fun for them because they feel a little bit more in control of their learning.
What do you guys do to keep your students motivated??
Sources:
Gross, Davis, Barbara: Tools for Teaching , Jossey-Bass Publishers: San Francisco, 1993
Six Ways to Motivate Students to Learn. Retrieved on March 13, 2014
http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/09/six-ways-motivate-students-to-learn/
My 6th grade middle school students are crazy about technology, I use group points to earn them technology time on Fridays, 1 point equals 1 minute and they can be taken away for negative behavior as well. The computer lab keeps my kids going throughout the week but yes we all struggle with truly tapping into their personal motivation every day of the week.
ReplyDeleteJenn:
DeleteEarning technology time is a great idea! I know how much your boys need that carrot dangling in front of them.
Jenny
I teach Kindergarten, which is a world apart from your classroom, however I think the idea of a reward/incentive is excellent. I keep my students motivated with a clip chart system, Earning your clip up to purple with exceptional behavior or academics will earn them treasure box. Obviously your students would not be into treasure box, however keeping a point system with some incentive to gain should keep them driven. Have you thought about having them earn points towards a movie day or pizza party type event? I have a friend who teaches junior high and this seems to work for her group. In fact some of her students just earned a Popsicle party yesterday.
ReplyDeleteHi Dayleen:
DeleteI am limited on food rewards due to my students only eating Kosher items! However, I have group points in my history classes and that seems to be working. At the end of each chapter (about a month), the team with the most points gets extra credit on their test. This last month was the first time I did this and I could really see the groups keeping each other on task!
Jenny
Keeping students motivated can be a challenge. It sounds like you have some additional challenges with the students in your classes since they will not go on to college. I think making the material you are teaching relevant to your students' lives is one of best ways to motivate them. You have to figure out what is important to them and find a way to relate that to your subject matter. If getting married when they graduate high school is important to the girls, then find a way to bring that into your lessons. My students' interests are all over the place, but many are involved in sports, so I often try to work sports into my lessons.
ReplyDeleteDanielle: I try to relate things to my students life, as much as I can. I also ask them a lot of questions about their religion and culture. We are 3/4 of the way through the year and I am still trying to wrap my head around what they believe and what their life paths are!
ReplyDeleteJenny
As a special education teacher, I use positive reinforcement and immediate feedback. When my students feel good about themselves, they tend to try harder. I have found that building their confidence helps as well.
ReplyDeleteJim: Confidence is huge! Good ideas :)
DeleteJenny
Jenny,
ReplyDeleteThank you for candidly sharing with us your feelings and the challenges you face. It can be especially challenging to motivate and engage students when their goals, perspectives, and plans are quite different from ours, the teachers'. I admire your efforts to help students relate academics to their lives outside. That is a good start. I think it may also be helpful to start more gradually from their perspectives and experiences, then move outward with them to the larger world, rather than the other way around. Sometimes as educators, we almost have to be like anthropologists and first see from students' point of view, withholding judgement, in order to find a mutual ground where we can connect with them and build mutual respect.
On the other hand, I think you also have the good idea of "making things social" in the classroom. It is through collaboration and a sense of community that they also begin to bond not just with each other, but also with you. You can continue to consider ways in which you can integrate technology in order to establish a community or communities in the classroom and with the classroom and communities outside.
Professor Kaw:
DeleteI have come a long way, since the beginning of the school year. It was quite the culture shock, when I first started working at my school. I show my travel pictures and my pictures from teaching abroad, to help my students connect to me.
Jenny