Motivating and Inspiring Students by Marzano Robert J.;Scott Darrell;

Author:Marzano, Robert J.;Scott, Darrell;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Marzano Resources
Published: 2019-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Recognition

One of the easiest ways to build students’ esteem is to recognize individual students, their abilities, and their achievements. In a classroom setting, students’ esteem derived from others has two sources: (1) peers and (2) teachers. As such, teachers can find ways to reward and recognize students when appropriate while also encouraging active appreciation for their classmates.

Peer Recognition

Students’ esteem from others is directly tied to how they believe their peers perceive them. Unfortunately, many students may be too embarrassed to express affection or admiration for other students and their accomplishments, abilities, or traits. To combat this tendency, teachers can use specific strategies that require students to recognize their peers and the value they add to the classroom. Here, we provide two strategies that encourage students to articulate their appreciation for their classmates: (1) student interviews and (2) compliments.

Student Interviews

One aspect of recognition relates to having other people recognize an individual’s complexities or uniqueness. To help students understand their classmates as individuals with unique interests and accomplishments, teachers can ask students to briefly interview one another. For example, a teacher might choose to start each class period by having students spend five minutes interviewing one another about their interests, hobbies, and accomplishments. The teacher would continue this activity throughout the year until each student in class has interviewed all of his or her classmates. As students interview their classmates, the teacher might prompt them to identify one unexpected thing they learned or something they found to be notable about their partner. This can be a particularly powerful activity in the beginning of the year to help students get to know one another and to create a sense of belonging (page 95).

Alternatively, teachers might assign partners—preferably two students who rarely interact—and ask the pairs to conduct more in-depth interviews of one another. With this activity, students may spend anywhere from fifteen to thirty minutes learning about their partners’ backgrounds, families, interests, achievements, beliefs, and other unique characteristics. After both partners have interviewed each other, students can share their findings with the class. To guide these presentations, teachers can provide students with the following questions.

▸ What is one thing you learned about your partner that you found surprising?

▸ What is one strength of your partner? Why?

▸ What is one notable thing that you learned about your partner?

▸ If you had to describe your partner in three adjectives, what would they be?

▸ What are your partner’s interests? How does that affect who he or she is as a person?

Teachers should remind students that the reports should be positive and are designed to help the class get to know its members. As such, students should also provide background knowledge about their partners that may be relevant. After a student is finished presenting, the rest of the class asks the student questions about his or her partner. If a presenting student does not know the answer to a question, their partner directly answers it. The anticipation of other classmates’ questions also encourages students to engage in more in-depth interviews.

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