Challenges & Learning Together: MOTIVATION
Dear All,
Heartfelt thanks to all our contributors. We received some daily teaching challenges that we meet in class in response to our “Challenges and Learning Together” blog post, ranging from mobile-phone over use, need to improve students’ grammar , and managing the difficulty level of teaching materials according to student profile . But the most frequently suggested challenge was motivating the students.
One of the responses reported:
“In regards to the classroom experience, I felt most challenged by the range of student profiles in my class. The two profiles that conflicted were:
1) Students in their second year at Scola who were generally demoralized and under-motivated, and
2) Direct entry students who were highly focused and highly motivated.
The first group were routinely unfocused, tardy, weary upon arrival, less responsive, less attentive and more difficult to engage, which caused disruptions for the rest of us. The second group had to endure the disruptions and the problems caused by this attitude and behaviour. The first group is higher needs in many respects and would be better served by being taught with an approach that specifically considers these needs. I felt that the students in the second group were short-changed because of the time and energy that had to go into classroom management. I found much of my energy going into classroom management and negotiating between these two sets of student profile needs”
We would like to dedicate all our collective efforts to solving the issue of lack of motivation that we face in class at times. Let’s join our forces and gather ideas and teaching suggestions to overcome the challenge of motivation.
How can we motivate the students if; (1) students profiles in the class display variety, (2) there are mixed ability students in our class, (3) we are teaching 5 hours in a row with the same class, (3) logistics of the class is not ideal (i.e. class without windows, not spacious…etc.), (4) students are bored easily ?
Looking forward to learning together…
For the first two cases especially, grouping them more frequently, especially in mini groups or pairs, could work. For instance, old&new, strong&tweak- so that they could:
1- feel less bored as they need to work with a new person
2- learn from eachother as strong gets better by repeating/reviewing and weak improves by learning from a peer.
Yet, for the efficient running of this idea, a certain amount of authority and close monitoring of the class during activities would probably be needed to ensure that these times don’t end up as Turkish chatting or smart phone using times. 😊
Thank YOU so much for the suggestions!We are very curious what others think about the ongoing battle between the urge to peek at the mobile phones and authority and close monitoring. It gets really exhausting at times 😉