Only a few teachers could deny motivated students are easier to teach. Also, students, who are motivated, are more interested to learn.
Motivation, both intrinsic and extrinsic acts as a crucial factor in students’ academic success. It plays a
pivotal role in providing encouragement and confidence for students to do well in their studies.
Of course, that’s much easier said than done. As what motivates one student can be different from another. That means teachers have to invest a lot of time and effort to get their students enthusiastic about learning and work hard to achieve academic excellence.
At times even the most experienced and educated teachers find difficulties to keep students on track. So how do teachers motivate their students?
In this post, we will take a look at the nine tried and tested strategies to keep your students interested in learning.
1. Give Students a Sense of Control
A teacher’s guidance does play a good role to help students get motivated to complete a task.
Allowing them some degree of choice on what happens in the class can help you to keep them engaged in their studies.
For instance, giving your student a choice to learn what topic they like or which problem to discuss can give them a sense of control, which may just be sufficient to motivate them on their studies.
Of course, you can’t allow that to happen every time, but practicing it occasionally could still be good enough to help boost their study motivation.
2. Define Clear Objectives
Just like professionals that want to know what is expected of them in a job role, students do as well want and need to know what is expected of them.
At times it can be very frustrating for students to complete different tasks or even behave properly when there aren’t clearly defined objectives.
To enhance students’ motivation, teachers must make sure to let students know what they expect from them. The beginning of the year is the ideal time when teachers must lay out clear objectives, rules, and expectations of students.
By doing so they can make sure that students don’t have any confusion in their mind and have goals to work towards throughout the year.
3. Make Better Decisions by Knowing Your Students Well
Increasing students’ motivation does demand teachers to make better decisions about class assignments and projects. When designing different tasks teachers should keep in mind students interests and strengths.
That will help them design assignments and projects in such a way that their student will find them interesting to work at.
For that, teachers can make use of different apps that can help them get a detailed picture of their students’ interest and skills.
Moreover, the same information could be used to implement suitable teaching strategies to students. For instance, teachers could use visualization, cooperative learning, inquiry-based instruction or other teaching strategies after finding out what works best with their students.
4. Teach in a Threat-Free Environment
Studying in a friendly, safe environment goes a long in increasing students’ motivation in learning. When teachers create a safe, supportive environment for their students they find them engage more in learning.
When teachers present confidence in students’ abilities to complete their work on a high note, rather than laying out the consequences of not doing their tasks, it increases students’ motivation.
Make sure that your students don’t find the classroom unsafe because of you or because of other students.
At the end of the day, students expect their teachers to guide them at what they are doing, rather demotivating them.
5. Create a Positive Competitive Environment
A class environment does play a crucial role in motivating students to learn. A positive air of competition in the classroom can turn to be handy in lifting students’ motivation in learning. It often helps teachers to make students try harder and work to excel.
Being a teacher you should foster a friendly spirit of competition in your classroom by doing activities that can give students an opportunity to present their abilities, and in return get recognition for doing well.
Quizzes, debates, interactive demonstrations, and ice breaker are a few activities that you can help you with that.
6. Incorporate Technology in Class
Students of this era love technology far more than those in the past. So incorporating technology in the classroom the right way can be handy when it comes to enhancing their study motivation.
Different types of technology can be used to liven up a learning session. Things like electronic whiteboards flipped learning, projectors, laptops, tablets, video conferencing, mobile learning and more could all be used by teachers in the classroom to better engage students in learning and increase their study motivation.
In fact, academic specialists at the leading essay writing service UK believes technology in our classrooms has helped a great deal in developing students interest in learning.
7. Encourage Collaboration
Not all students may be interested to work with one another in groups; however, many will find it fun to work with other students on different projects.
Collaboration in the classroom can be exciting for students. They can motivate each other to work towards a joined goal and get to know each other well at the same time.
However, teachers must make sure that the groups are well-balanced and fair; this will ensure that students don’t sense any biasedness.
In addition, the collaboration also provides students with a chance to showcase their abilities to other students; therefore, it can also act as a study motivation factor.
8. Give Students Responsibility
Assigning students with classroom responsibility can be a great way to enhance their confidence and boost their motivation to learn.
Students will find these responsibilities as a privilege rather than a burden and put effort into them done on time, efficiently meeting their teachers’ expectations.
Further, added responsibilities also come handy to help students explore their leadership skills. Also, that way they feel important and valued.
9. Be Excited Teaching Them
When students find enthusiasm in their teachers' tone while giving them a lecture, it motivates them to learn more.
It’s a two-way process, as when a teacher is excited about teaching; his or her students will be much more excited about learning.
Therefore, being a teacher you shouldn’t sound bored when you are giving out a lecture. Make sure your tone has eagerness, passion, and excitement when you are teaching something to your students.
Wrapping Up
There you go, increasing students’ motivation to study is not as difficult as it may sound. All it requires teachers to channelize their energy, time and effort in the right direction.
The aforementioned ways can help you get started from somewhere. So make sure you utilize them in your day-to-day teaching strategy.