A Teacher’s Companion to Essential Motivation in the Classroom: Resources and Activities to Inspire and Engage Your Students by Holleran Georgia Gilbert Ian

Author:Holleran, Georgia,Gilbert, Ian
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-317-75079-6
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Ask a friend

Walk through the learning

Map of the learning/topic

Stand up to think

Visualisation

Teach someone else

Interactive whiteboard

Debates and discussions

Record learning to replay later

Post-it notes

Mime/act out

Active reading

Doodle

Role-play / professional theatre group

Write in the air

It seems like an apt time to reintroduce wonderful Mr Dobbins, as first mentioned by Ian, and the phrase that could start off any learning session with glowingly positive intentions:

You are responsible for your own success, you will go far and I will have achieved a great deal today.

What you might have to bear in mind here is the individual maturity of your students. Schools and classrooms often rely on big assumptions to function with any efficiency at all. The main assumption we have to make is that our students are ready and able to learn when we are ready to teach. It’s not a wrong assumption, just not a very realistic model of how we, as humans, work. Imagine saying to a new born baby, ‘Right come on now, I’ve got the weekend free, let’s get you walking.’ You might be ready, but my bet would be that the baby just hasn’t got the capability yet, no matter what tactics you use. But guess what? That baby, given the right encouragement and time to develop, will probably start to take its first steps within the year and, before too long, will be off running down the street with you in hot pursuit in no time. Bearing in mind the human brain fully matures some time between ages 25 and 30, you could be waiting a while for some of your students to be ready. So the thought to ponder on is: are your students misbehaving because they don’t want to learn what you’re teaching, or are they not ready? Whatever the outcome of your pondering, the conclusion has to be to ensure your classroom is the best environment for encouraging your students to give the best they’ve got.

And, when it comes to responsibility for learning, you have to take Mr Dobbins’ words to heart too. You are not responsible for your students’ successes. Or failures, come to that. But when they are in your classroom, you have been handed the baton of their learning and you must do something with it. Be bold. Give them the opportunity to LEARN.

The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

Eden Phillpotts, author and playwright

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