Many teachers are concerned about how to best motivate students.\u00a0 We want to appeal to intrinsic motivation rather than having students work for extrinsic rewards.\u00a0 None of us want to foster unhealthy competitiveness in our classroom.\u00a0 Teachers want to motivate ALL the students, not just the most able and brightest students.\u00a0 Here are four principles of motivation that need to be taken into account when designing a system of motivation.<\/p>\n
The most powerful aspect of any reward or recognition is how the teacher acts when giving it out.\u00a0 Teachers powerfully motivate their students when their affect is one of being impressed by the accomplishment.\u00a0 Students love to do something that “wows” their teacher.\u00a0 Children are motivated to do things that impress adults.\u00a0 When adults seem like they think the child really did something amazing, then the concrete form of the recognition doesn’t matter.\u00a0 Even a slip of paper,if it’s given out for an impressive accomplishment, will be highly sought after.\u00a0 A food prize, that is given out without caring by the teacher, will be worth little.\u00a0 The Olympic gold medal is powerful because of the recognition that everyone gives to that accomplishment–it has nothing to do with the actual token given.<\/p>\n
The accomplishment that is rewarded must be a concrete achievement that is objectively measured.\u00a0 The students must all know what it takes to earn it.\u00a0 Teachers sometimes give out recognition that appears to be subjectively awarded.\u00a0 That is not good.\u00a0 If students can think, “Well Billy got that award because the teacher likes him,” then they will not be motivated.\u00a0 Students need to see a task or behavior (that they could do if they work hard) as the reason for the award.\u00a0 Students have to believe they will get the reward even if the teacher does not like them.\u00a0 All they have to do is work hard and they’ll get the reward.\u00a0 Then they will be motivated.\u00a0 Conversely, if everyone gets one regardless of their accomplishments, then it will be meaningless.\u00a0 Trophies for all makes them worthless.<\/p>\n
A concrete achievement also lessens competition.\u00a0 Students are not competing against each other.\u00a0 Instead, they are competing with themselves.\u00a0 Everyone who accomplishes that goal will be rewarded.\u00a0 If students feel they have a realistic shot at the reward, then it will be motivational.\u00a0 They may not be the first to accomplish that goal, but if they stick to it and keep working, they can eventually get there.\u00a0 If adults are impressed by the achievement (and they’ve seen evidence of that–see #1) then students will be motivated to achieve it.<\/p>\n
To motivate ALL the students, the achievement needs to be something that is the result of effort rather than talent.\u00a0 It should be something that might take a while to achieve.\u00a0 If anyone can do it immediately (like breathing) then there’s no glory. Students need to know that it can be achieved with effort, if you keep trying.\u00a0 Accumulating 25 miles of running (100) laps is a more motivating goal for students with less athletic skill than trying to be the fastest runner in class or breaking a record for the mile.\u00a0 In Rocket Math, teachers have reported instances where their whole class spontaneously cheered when a student who had a lot of difficulty and many failures, finally passes their first level.\u00a0 Now that’s how good motivation is supposed to work!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Many teachers are concerned about how to best motivate students.\u00a0 We want to appeal to intrinsic motivation rather than having students work for extrinsic rewards.\u00a0 None of us want to foster unhealthy competitiveness in our classroom.\u00a0 Teachers want to motivate ALL the students, not just the most able and brightest students.\u00a0 Here are four principles […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":837,"featured_media":38683,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0},"categories":[136],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38679"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/837"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38679"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38691,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38679\/revisions\/38691"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocketmath.com\/stagingserver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}