Motivation in the Classroom Essay -- Teaching Education

Motivation in the Classroom Students want and need work that enables them to demonstrate and improve their sense of themselves as competent and successful human beings. This is the drive toward mastery. But success, while highly valued in our society, can be more or less motivational. People who are highly creative, for example, actually experience failure far more often than success. Biehler (p. 225) claims that studies show that when CAI used in conjunction with a teacher's lessons, is particularly beneficial for low-achieving and young students. Before we can use success to motivate our students to produce high-quality work, we must meet three conditions: 1. We must clearly articulate the criteria for success and provide clear, immediate, and constructive feedback. 2. We must show students that the skills they need to be successful are within their grasp by clearly and systematically modeling these skills. 3. We must help them see success as a valuable aspect of their personalities. All this seems obvious enough, but it is remarkable how often we fail to meet these conditions for our students. Take skills. Can you remember any crucial skills that you felt you did not successfully master because they were not clearly taught? Was it finding themes in literature? Reading and interpreting primary texts? Thinking through nonroutine math problems? Typically, skills like these are routinely assigned or assumed, rather than systematically modeled or practiced by teachers. So how can we help students master such skills? When teaching your students to find themes, for example, deliberately model interpretation. Ask your students to give you a poem you have never seen, and then interpret it both for and with them. If they are reading primary texts, use what we call the "main idea" strategy. Teach them how to find the topic (usually a noun or noun phrase), the main idea (a sentence that states the text's position on the topic), and reasons or evidence to support the main idea. If students are concerned about writer's block, remember that perhaps the most difficult task of a teacher is to teach how to think creatively. In regards to behavior modification it's noted in Biehler(p.237), in the case of primary students there is a possibility that some students will come to realize that the teacher rewards them only when they've done what she... ... arouses intense curiosity? By making sure it features two defining characteristics: the information about a topic is fragmentary or contradictory, and the topic relates to students' personal lives. Students then work together in-groups, retracing the steps scientists took in weighing the available evidence to arrive at an explanation. We have seen student’s work diligently for several days dealing with false hypotheses and red herrings, taking great delight when the solutions begin to emerge. As for topics that relate to students' lives, the connection here cannot be superficial; it must involve an issue or idea that is both manageable and unresolved. We must ask, With what issues are adolescents wrestling? How can we connect them to our curriculum? Figure 1 illustrates some possibilities for adolescents. Bibliography: References Snowman, Jack/Biehler, Robert (2000) Psychology Applied to Teaching Houghton Mifflin Co. Colin, Baker (1996) Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism Multilingual Matters (pgs 105-143) Cummins, Jim (1996) Negotiating Identities: Education for Empowerment in a Diverse Society California Association for Bilingual Education