Revamping... for Motivation's Sake!

The air is heavy inside your classroom. It’s hot. Some kids are slouched onto their desks. Others are barely propped up by an elbow. You even see a yawn or two. Student mood and motivation is in a slump, and subsequently, yours is too. Not even a Snickers will help at this point. Mood, motivation, and emotion all have tremendous impacts on learning, and in order to avoid an outright Bueller moment, we need to ensure that we are empowering our students to take control over their learning and that we are planning authentic learning experiences to help keep motivation high!

One way to boost motivation is to reconsider how we evaluate students. Intrinsic motivation for learning is negatively affected when students are aware of a formal evaluation process. Formal evaluation can cause feelings of anxiety, which have proven effects on learning, performance, and cognition. Think, for a moment, about what taking the SBAC test must feel like for an eight year old. A silent classroom (how often does THAT happen?), one-to-one computer devices with text directions and 50 questions to do (or THAT?), the teacher circulating around the room for an hour NOT HELPING YOU AT ALL (Okay, that NEVER happens!). It’s unauthentic. It’s anxiety inducing. It’s terrifying. And, it’s not ok. While certain things are out of the realm of our control as teachers, we can work to design authentic learning projects, and evaluate for learning without the students even realizing it. In doing so, we preserve students sense of self-worth, confidence, and can keep student morale high.

This is all easier said than done, right? Wrong. It sounds scientific, but teachers do this kind of thing all the time. We’re always evaluating students informally, whether it’s listening in as a partnership discusses a book they’re reading, watching a student manipulate geotiles, or having a conversation with a student as they try to work out a real-life math problem like how many buses are needed for the school field trip.

In my classroom, students must develop a general understanding of the major organs and their location within the human body. Rather than drill and kill, which we know isn’t effective anyway, I put students into groups and have THEM become the teachers. Groups select a major organ of their choice to research about (they could even use this cool app) and then have to work together to somehow “teach” their learned information to the rest of the class. Groups have written songs, made slide shows, acted out skits, and even made “real size” models of the organs (you’ve never seen a party-streamer intestinal tract like that before!). Their presentations are always a great indication of their learning, and no “test” is needed. Students are relaxed, motivated, and they have fun learning content while I can easily and authentically evaluate them.

So, if you want to avoid the Bueller scenario, think about how you can REVAMP your evaluation process to improve student motivation.