So, how can we motivate our students?
That's such a hard task, plus it all depends on a lot of different factors:
- Age;
- Interests;
- Goals;
- Gender.
The hardest group of people to motivate is the teenagers. First of all, most of them hate studying and they hate extra activities (they're too lazy). Normally their parents make them go to the English classes. They're also always tired, plus school is already too much for them: they don't have time to practice or to put any effort on any other thing.
For them, I found 2 solutions. The nice one: try to bring games, music, TV series. Encourage their competitive side, make them interested, try to enter a little bit in their world - bring to your class activities related to the stuff they like. But remember that the group of the teenagers also divedes itself in smaller groups. So, if you got a mixed class try to please one smaller group at the time. One week you bring a pop music activity, another week you bring a scarry movie and so on.
The bad solution is a little radical. If nothing works tell them that everything in class is worth points. They'll just freak out and, even if they don't wanna work, they will do the minimum, because most of them know that if they don't get a good grade they'll be punished. But it isn't your work to punish them. Bring nice works for them and sooner or later they will like it and do their class works just for pleasure. And I garantee, sometime in their lives they will be thankfull for what you've done for them.
The second group is made by the children and they are much easier to motivate. They learn better when they're having fun, they can't know that they are learning. The best way is using colerful things and whatever visual stuff that they can interact with. For example, a "Weather Board".
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| By teacher Marcela |
Eevery day ask the students "how is the weather today?" and choose one of them to change the arrow's place. They get very excited about helping the teacher!
The adults are just fine, bucause they're mature and responsible. They know what they need and what they want. But anyways, show that you care about them... Create boards with challenges, hints, nice websites, etc.
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| Welcome Board |
On this one I put the break time, the "next task", a challenge and the "best" student (they also like a little competition).
Hope I can halp you motivating your students. If you need any idea of extra exercices or games, sing in on the website below:
There you can send activities that you created and once somebody download it you get points. With each point you can download 1 document. It is a very nice and trustable source.
Have such a good night and wait for more :)
xoxoxo
