In my previous post I told you about the importance of motivation for studies, it is fundamental because it gives us the necessary strength to overcome difficulties and make the necessary efforts to achieve a certain goal, whether it is an academic grade or learning a skill.
Certainly motivation is something personal, and when we want to learn it depends on us to make the necessary actions to do so, but an important part of the motivational component is also the responsibility of the teacher, or no one has ever had such a boring teacher whose classes could put us to sleep or those who did not have the necessary sensitivity to address a student with any disadvantage and make him look bad in front of others, those attitudes on the part of the teacher are equally detrimental to the teaching process because they do not inspire the student enough to go beyond the academic objective.
Motivation is an essential ingredient in education. Image credit: pixabay.com
So what can we do when we are responsible for teaching?
Here are some tips that have served me well in my work as an educator, to help students find what they are passionate about and positively influence their desire to learn:
Get to know your students. This is very important to find what they are passionate about, it can be a topic or a particular style of teaching, I remember reading on instagram that a chemistry teacher used a periodic table where the chemical elements were somehow related to a superhero, to motivate his students to learn the properties of the elements. It is then about finding what catches their attention and awakens their interest, for this you can apply the theory of multiple intelligences, to put into practice different teaching strategies according to the most developed intelligence in students, that is why it is important to listen and get to know the students and discover what they are passionate about or help them to discover it.
Create engaging expectations. Approach learning as a discovery and encourage your students to participate. This is why project-based learning has been used a lot lately, this type of work is a good option to teach them to investigate and work in teams, in some cases allowing them to propose their own projects is a good initiative to increase their motivation.
Encourage your students to participate in projects of interest to them. Image credit: pixnio.
Relate content to practice. Whenever possible, it is necessary to relate learning to a reality of the student's environment, so that they can see the usefulness of what they are learning. This makes it much easier for them to become involved and interested, in addition to achieving more meaningful learning, producing an experience that is easier to remember than theory alone.
Fieldwork is a very powerful tool for education. Image credit: pixnio.com.
Use ICT. Nowadays students are digital natives, so technological tools attract their attention instinctively, so you can support the content given in the classroom or work them differently with an application or resource that encourages them to investigate and practice what they have learned. Luckily, on the internet we can find all kinds of videos and applications that can help us to get the most out of a subject.
Digital tools are very useful in education. Image credit: pixabay.com.
Well friends, these tips are very useful not only for a teacher but also for mothers who in the midst of this pandemic have had to assume an important role in the education of their children, because motivation is an essential ingredient of learning, and sometimes one of the most difficult to achieve, and an unmotivated student loses interest and can also help to hinder the development of the class, so it is very important to always keep awake their desire to learn.
I hope you enjoyed the reading, see you next time!
