Motivation Beyond the Classroom

Motivating students is a key factor in educating and engaging students, but it can be a challenge for educators to reach each student. While some may believe that motivation is intrinsic, there are many ways to motivate students who struggle to stay engaged with learning. For an educator, it is important to identify what motivates and engages the students. For lessons in the classroom, an educator should plan and provide a variety of lesson types and strategies; differentiated instruction. Facilitate various lessons/tasks that are interactive, collaborative, consultative, traditional, technology based, or a hybrid. Educators should review the data by identifying which lesson types their students respond to most and try to implement those lessons as options in their lesson plans and routines.   

Some may argue that in-class motivation is an easy task as teachers can gage and adapt their lesson to the students' engagement level, but the real challenge is students' motivation to work through the process and complete a task or produce a final product. Consolidating skills and practice work, helps keep the students active in lessons and gives them the opportunity to practice and apply what they have been taught at school. After a long day of school and additional work to be completed at home, or practice work at home, how can teachers keep their students engaged? In my own personal experience, many of my own teachers would turn to incentives to keep students engaged beyond the classroom.  

From personal experience, a French teacher used the incentive of a sticker grid to keep students actively engaged in reading or watching french programming at home. This incentive was open for the whole class to participate in. Parents would sign off on the students' agenda to confirm their child did the practice work and the time allotted to read or watch French programs. Every hour the student spent would earn points to get a prize. Students could either choose to collect their prize after the row or column, or work towards filling the grid for the big prize. This kept the students engaged in their extension activities and practice for several months, but once the participation from students began to decline, the teacher added two new incentives to engage them. The practice work and activities provided were inclusive and gave all students the chance to participate, regardless of the level of support by parents at home.  

While some may agree or disagree with the use of incentives as a classroom/home motivational tool, it is a positive way to engage and inspire, giving students the positivity that comes from a task completed well, or the learning of a new skill. As adults enter the workforce they are motivated and rewarded by a paycheck, possibly a promotion or the gratification of a job well-done. Our society thrives on incentives and avenues that keep people motivated. Educators should be mindful of the different and inclusive ways to motivate their class in the classroom and beyond, by providing different methods and strategies to motivate and engage. It is important to be open to a variety of strategies and with the goal of student engagement and learning as the focus.  

Juliana. L @ NU