Students who have problems staying motivated will most likely struggle with their grades. Many teachers are proactive and believe that it’s necessary to intervene with students before it is too late.
If you also want to be among those teachers, what can you do to motivate your students to stay engaged throughout the learning process?
Motivating them intrinsically
Internal motivation also knows as intrinsic motivation is a way to motivate your students by rewarding them whenever they accomplish something. The reward will make them feel that sense of accomplishment.
Efforts of using this form of motivation include intensive learning and a lot of patience. Your students may only start to adapt to it after a while of using it but it has great, long-lasting results that may branch out to adulthood.
Motivating them externally
Letting your students know how proud you are of them when they do good will also help them stay motivated. Another driver of extrinsic motivation is getting scholarships or other extra-curricular perks.
This method makes it easy to motivate a class you aren’t familiar with yet. The method also focuses on the reward model but is quite different from intrinsic motivation.
There is a danger to this approach, since it may cause students to pursue learning goals for the wrong reasons.
Stimulating Learning Styles
If you prepare your teaching materials appropriately, your students will be engaged in the class and use the education they get to the fullest potential. You need to bear in mind that there are three types of students, you get deep learners, strategic learners, and surface learners.
For deep learners, their materials and content should be detail-oriented and challenging.
Strategic learners tend to be intrinsically driven, and therefore, you need to design the work assignments and tests in a way that makes them feel accomplished once they have done them. If you have surface learners, who try by all means to avoid failure, you can use methods that will help them gain self-confidence.
Feel good about what you teach
If are not excited about the material how do you expect your students to be? Find a way to get enthusiastic about the topic you are teaching and this will transfer over to your students. Don’t read notes or explain a complex point in a way that will make them sleep. Be active and happy during your class.
Make the class interactive and focus on the students’ engagement during the class more than anything else.
Connect to your students as individuals
Knowing your students will help you understand where their weaknesses, insecurities, and strengths lie. Once you know that you can use it to your advantage to motivate them.
For example, if you know a student is strong in a particular subject, you can focus on his strengths and gradually branch out to working through his weaknesses.
When students feel that you are interested in them as people, that care will translate to them taking your class more seriously.
Use examples
When you use examples, especially funny ones, they will stick for longer in your student’s head. Don’t be serious all the time. Be humorous, receptive and approachable.
Your examples don’t have to be complicated, but a simple example that gets the point across is all your students need to get motivated because they will find that they are better able to assimilate the information you are teaching.
Conclusion
The key to successfully motivating your students is knowing them individually and all of their traits and styles of learning. This way, you can tailor a teaching method that will be beneficial to all. Don’t give up on your students but continue showing that self-sacrificing attitude towards helping them realize the importance of education in their lives.
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