Hi guys, thank you so much for coming and joining me again. Today We had to go to be talking about how to improve students motivation to learn today. I think this is one of the most, the question things, I think, for me to talk about in my podcast, and if you're watching this on YouTube, that's on YouTube as well, Make sure you go check that out if you haven't, but I want to just quickly remind you.
This is actually your last week to check out the effective teaching series. I released the videos last week, but this week coming with the last week, you can watch these videos so you get like, two weeks to watch those videos. So, if you haven't had a chance to learn about how you can reduce your workload, or how to really improve the effectiveness of your classroom, or if you haven't learnt, how to really set yourself up to being effective, teacher long-term.
And that's a whole work life balance and what you need around you the support, all those kinds of things to set you up for being a successful teacher. Please make sure you go and register at a teacher's PD dot net. Slash a series, You can sign up there and you'll land straight on the first video and you can watch all three of three of them straight away.
If you like, but they are there ready for you to watch for you to go and do some learning? It's all on demand, whatever you like, go check that out. If you haven't yet, I want to remind you. That learning is actually super hard, right? This is hard work.
Students have to put in a lot of effort to actually learn something learning is generally difficult. If you haven't done it for a while, right? Then you're probably haven't listened to too many my podcast. If you haven't done it for what. But yeah, this is all about learning, right?
We like to learn. I love learning. I love reading you books. I love all that stuff, but sometimes it's hard. You got to work out how the pieces, really connect? You get a fail. When you try and implement stuff that you think you've learnt and you are, I didn't, maybe I've missed something.
I haven't quite learnt that properly, then go back and have another go. And that is learning, learning has all these stumbling blocks and for students particularly, you know, they're particularly if they're teenagers and stuff that at that point in their life, where to actually take a step out and give something a go.
If they fail publicly that can be a humiliated gonna affect their self-esteem, or those kinds of things. And I know that happens for the younger prime years as well. But really important for us to remember these things when it comes to learning and understand that it is hard and we need to work on helping them to be motivated.
And students generally are unwilling to put in effort if they think that success is unlikely. So if they don't think they're going to be successful in this learning, they're not going to be motivated to do it because they don't think they're going to achieve it. So it's super important that we understand that we need to make sure the learning that's in front of them is set up in a way, or they're presented in a way where success seems highly likely for them.
They look at it and go, I could put in some work and I'm going to get this. I'm gonna nail that. That's fine. And so students, they need to see that learning is likely that actually likely to succeed because confidence is what's going to fuel motivation and so it can be that we need to start going.
Hey, remember, last week, or last year, you were previously successful in something that's very similar. So you can start to highlight all these previous successes that the students have had to help them to become more motivated. And so if a student hasn't had that success, particularly in your subject area or in the school, it's going to be harder for you.
And so you've got to find ways to neck learning like learning that may not have happened in school but just show them how they've learnt things and how they've been successful at things that were hard when they put in the effort and they achieve things, they can do that in school and they can get the same results that success is likely if they put in the effort, It's also more likely, that students will be motivated if easy access exists to the knowledge.
So that is if they actually have already alert, the things that they need to learn that they're then going to manipulate. So, in our last episode, for example, I was talking about the higher levels of blooms taxonomy if they haven't got that lower level if they can't easily remember things and understand things.
I haven't got that yet. Then it's they're not gonna be motivated to the higher order thinking. It needs to be easily accessible. Because when knowledge is easily accessed, when students can recall it really quickly that it increases their confidence that they're actually gotten the right answer and that they're actually they're manipulating the right pieces of content as their evaluating it.
So it's super important, okay? So this could be that. They've learnt it really well but if you need to push on into those high things and you know, that students haven't quite grasped it, you can just give them a sheet with a list of dot points. That kind of give them the main point, so they can easily reference it as they're going through.
That will also help them to see that they're more likely to be successful in the learning. Now, students also need a task that is worth doing One that they actually believe they can do. Now, this is a task that you might relate to real, the real world to real life.
It might be that when you're going to do triangles, you actually go look at bridges and buildings and stuff. So you can see triangles in application in what they actually look like. In the world how they used you can do about their structures, their strengths and how things like Pythagoras is really helpful for the understanding that triangles are part of squares, all that kind of stuff.
But showing them that the learning is worth the effort. So some ways that you can do that is that you can show them peers who have been successful, They need to be careful. When you do this you're not doing a comparison of this person can do it. Why can't you?
That's not the way to do it. It's a yeah, this person just put in a whole bunch of effort they were successful. If you put in the effort, you will also be successful. Setting them up to see that people like them. I'm more likely to have been successful, right?
This whole idea of successful learning, if they see that effort leads to success, they're more likely be motivated and so you can show them peers that will help them. Making sure that you're providing a model of what they can actually do. So maybe you're going to give them a scaffold or some examples of what success looks like.
Can help the student to understand that it's worth doing, You can help them to see that they're more likely to be successful. And so they're going to do that. The other thing we need to think about is the zone of Proximal development. If you haven't heard that term for please go and Google it.
The Zona-pox will development is essentially that zone for learning that is just outside of what a student can do on their own. But not so far outside of that that they to the point where they can't do it, right? Where they, we want that zone, where we go with some effort, and maybe a little tiny bit of assistance.
They're gonna get this, that's your zone approximal development, and that's the zone. We're learning needs to be so that students go. I can see that if I put in effort, I'm gonna achieve this. That is super key for motivation. It also shows it can't be too easy, right? If it's just it sits inside what they've already done.
That also decreases their motivation. If everything that's, you're giving them is too easy. Then they're not challenged without a challenge that also. Reduces the motivation levels for the learning as I look at and go, I can do that. I've done that, it's too easy. Now let's talk about some actions.
You can put into place this week to really help your students to increase their motivation. So, number one, you could create a portfolio of student success and I highly recommend. You get your students to create these portfolios and attract them. Particularly, you know, you could do this for your partial care or your welfare class, right?
It doesn't have to be always for your actual class. I mean, you can do with the students in your class too, for sure. But you can even motivate students when you have them, not know so much in a subject but just in an area where you're going to see them regularly, right?
And so you can go. Do you know what guys one things we're gonna do is I want to help you guys to see how you are as learners. And so we're going to create these portfolios of their successful learnings and so I like to use Google Sites for this and the students can just stick up all of their successful learnings things that they're kind of proud of on the site.
They can take photos and to get up. It can be the document if it's a Google Doc, just embeds, Right? A slider presentation. It can be a video. They've made all kinds of stuff. They just chuck it straight into that site and they can use the menu does categorise it by subjects, all that kind of stuff and they can start to see their progress and it means that when you have a new thing you're doing with them, that's going to be difficult.
You can say guys, let's pull out your portfolios. Have a look at your successes, think about what you put in like the effort you put in to get these and that is going to help. Give them the motivation. That's needed to attack this new piece of learning that you're putting in front of them.
The other thing you want to do is make sure that your language in the classroom attributes, the student success to their effort. You don't want to contribute their success, to the fact that they're super smart or that they were born intelligent or oh my goodness. This is so quick and easy for you.
You must be amazing, but that is not helpful when it comes to motivation. In fact, it's gonna demotivate your students. They're gonna think that they don't need to put in effort. And it doesn't quite effort means that they're dominant or that something's wrong with the system around them. So you want to attribute their success to the effort?
That's the whole growth mindsets stuff that car would has, is on all that in her book. The other thing you can do is you can start to relate the current challenges that the students have in their learning with some past ones that have overcome. So maybe they're coming up to a similar thing and you can go.
Okay guys, when this happened two weeks ago, when you got stuck with a word that you were reading that you didn't know what did you do to work out with that word was? So maybe they broke it down, Maybe they sounded it out, Maybe they tried to identify other words that were part of that larger word or maybe they looked it up in a dictionary, maybe they asked a friend, maybe they read the paragraph a couple of times to see what it kind of meant in the context.
And so they're coming up with the strategies that they use, and they go, oh, that's right. I can do that. I overcame it. Last time I can do it again here, and I can overcome it, it'll be fine. And so you're relating. The current challenges to past challenges that they've had and that they've overcome.
You don't want to show them past challenges where they've given up, right? That's not going to be helpful but past challenges that have overcome are super helpful to improve their motivation. And finally, I want you to find a way this week to focus on students personal progress rather than comparing them to other students.
Okay? So generally speaking our grades system and our mark system are all about comparing students, It's all about, you know, you're an A, you're a C. You're a D, mr. This student got 70%, the student. Got 90%. The student got 87% and that is a way for us to be able to compare them and to rank them and all that kind of stuff, which is needed for some things.
But for your classroom, it's actually detrimental. It's going to decrease students motivation and do anything. Yeah, we all have seen students with marked their assignments. We've given it back to them with feedback, They see their grade and they don't care about that feedback and we need to start to make sure that in our class, we've actually focusing on personal best.
We're looking at personal progress where you up to now, where were you a week ago? Where were you a week before that? And actually tracking that progress with your students and making sure that they are seeing that progress, it will help them to be motivated. And know that the challenges come they can put in the effort and they are likely to be successful as the big key for motivation with your students.
And what to show them that they are likely to be successful. Well, that is it for this week. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope that your students improve their motivation through some of the things that you change this week and that you hopefully you continue to utilise throughout the rest of your career If you have not checked out the effective teaching series, remember this is the last week that you can do that head to teachers PD.net slash ET series learn how to reduce your workload, how to make sure your classroom is effective and how to ensure that you as an effective teacher are setting yourself up for long-term success.
Go and check that series out your last week to watch that before I take them down. So, please make sure you go and get some good learning done with those three videos this week. Anyway, I'll catch you again next week.
