To get students more excited about the content, it could be actually detrimental to offer rewards. As you'll see in this video I found on YouTube, people do not reach their full potential when they are offered rewards. This takes the fun out of it; students no longer think creatively or do the work to see how awesome it is that they solved a problem. One way I have been getting students excited about geometry and business math is relating to their interests, or at least real life. Another thing I do is show how their current math class connects to many different higher levels and subjects of mathematics.
The best thing we can do is make lessons that are interesting to our students, but we cannot always get students enthused about the content, so we have to be prepared to offer other incentives. These incentives are hard to determine because it depends on the student. I have been trying to observe teachers and see how they motivate without bringing up points or grades. I have heard some great motivating sayings to on and off task students, such as:
"If you worked for me, you would get a raise" or "If you worked for me, you wouldn't get paid today"
"You're a great student"
"In high school, you learn how to learn" (in response to "why do I need to know this?")
I have had to give a few talks in my classrooms as to why it is important that they do their work and succeed in the class, and it was something that I hadn't really thought of planning so frequently and carefully for until recently. It is a huge part of this job, and it shows how important our role is - our students really need us, and most of the time, they don't even know it.
Interesting video about motivating students (the first 3.5 minutes is sufficient to watch):
This is such a great topic. I just posted something similar to this about the CST's and keeping students motivated to do well on something where they don't necessarily see the reward. It's one of the most important jobs we have as teachers to try and motivate our students to learn for knowledge sake and nothing more. I guess the best way I can think of is to keep our lessons engaging new, and exciting and hopefully create a desire in our students to continue wanting to seek out more.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, we as teachers need to cultivate a spark in our students to constantly ask why. I think that by teaching students to continually question and seek answers is what might help them continue to do just that.
Very, very interesting. I found that this video very practical. I loved the part about the “Stanley bucks” being worth as much as unicorns and leprechauns. This was a very good topic in which I wish we had discussed more in class. The Alfie Kohn quotations made me re-evaluate what I am doing in my classroom. I also thought about the Daniel Pink part regarding how we don’t perform as well for cognitive-based activities when they are incentive- based. I would like to see his sources on that comment, but I also identify with it to an extent. I think about my short stint in sales and I often think about how stressful it was to worry about quotas and bonuses when you have little training or control over a situation. I transferred this feeling to what some of my students may feeling if they were put into a similar situation.
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