The issue of motivation is something that is relevant in all parts of life. As teacher we have to help find ways to motivate students with the knowledge that motivational strategies that are successful for one child may fail completely with another. The ultimate goal in motivational strategies has to be to help our students to become intrinsically self motivated academically.
As an early childhood educator, as was mentioned in class, I find it fairly simple to motivate my students. Many are motivated simply by the fact that they wish to please their teacher, parents, etc or perhaps to impress their peers. Others gain motivation through a desire to master more difficult topics. Although I don’t like to use external motivational sources often (rewards) it can seem somewhat unavoidable with young children. The goal with these is to phase them out gradually once a skill or behavior has been learned and the motivation is internal.
I enjoyed reading the Schunk and Zimmerman article this week on modeling, because although seemingly obvious it presented some nice points about the benefits of teacher and peer modeling in relation to motivation. The students are so connected to each other that they not only gain confidence from one another’s successes but also get inspired by peer work. I have been working a lot on building a community feeling in the classroom where students feel safe to take a risk and know that they will be supported by their classmates. I think this is very important when it comes to motivation. We also spend a fair amount of time commenting on each other work. This helps to build their confidence, but also gives positive feedback and constructive criticisms so that students know how to improve with effort. The students are getting so used to this type of dialogue that they are including it in reading groups (“you made such a good voice for the dad!” or “how did you figure out what that word was?”). When the questions, comments, and explanations come from their peers students seem more willing to listen and buy into it. They also are becoming more metacognative while reading and writing.
A final strategy I use in the classroom to build motivation is to save pieces of work and data and showing it to the students as they improve. Each time they try something again and can see an improvement their motivation to become even better and learn even more grows. With young children you can see it in their faces!
I found this page on Reading Rockets which has some easily digestible information on motivation and would be a good resource for parents as well.
Hey Justine,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your post! While I am not in a classroom, I have read quite a bit about using visual aids when teaching children vocabulary. One way to teach your children vocabulary is to label a lot of items in the classroom (book shelves, desk, lights, chair). This helps children become familiar with vocabulary words and spelling. The teacher can switch out the labels according to what the children are learning. I think this would be particularly helpful for English language learners. They can associate the item with the word. I found a scholarly journal that I found to be particularly helpful when attempting to implement this strategy in the classroom. www.newbridgeonline.com/articles/VVB_ResearchReport.pdf
Justine, motivation certainly affects our attitude about learning and completing tasks in school and in general. I use intangible rewards much more frequently than I use tangible rewards through table point competitions or other reinforcement systems, as I find that it forces the children to work together and become more intrinsically motivated. I often observe the class shift back to being on task when one student or a few students are verbally praised for following directions or trying their best at literacy centers. This example reinforces your point that students are connected and driven by others' actions.
ReplyDeleteIn the book Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College by Doug Lemov, the author suggests having the entire class give props (technique #35), in the form of percussion noises, such as "two snaps, two stomps." The props should be short and encourage enthusiasm from all students. This is a way to reward students for participation and get the entire class involved. Even before reading about this technique, I was already using props in my classroom and the children love it! This year I have started getting their input about new props to add to our repertoire, so they can take more ownership.
You can read about how teachers have implemented the techniques such as Props (#35) from Teach Like a Champion at http://teachlikeachampionproject.blogspot.com/.
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