Month: June 2021

Every student has hope attached to him/her. There are many teachers who strongly feel that their students should learn and have high ambitions. But with the growing pressures of school, highly indulging technology culture and busy lifestyle, it is a little difficult to keep students interested in school or at home.

But there are some simple things that teachers can do to motivate students which have worked wonders.

Plan to innovate

Plan each class in a different manner. Innovative measures to convey your subject matter will always keep your students motivated to learn more and be excited about what is coming next. This curiosity is one of the greatest attributes of a student and if you’re able to stimulate that, you will have a bunch of highly motivated students who’re willing to take what you offer.

Set examples

Screening of movies with a motivational protagonist or reading biographies or books related to successful people in the world, taking examples of high achieving seniors is one of the best ways to motivate students. Every child has a role model. If you help them choose an inspiring role model and keep providing new examples, your students would discover motivation for themselves.

Explore the unique

Every student has his/her specific likes and dislikes. Based on every child’s interest, give them an independent or a group project to explore something regarding what they like. Ask them to come up with a presentation and tell everyone what they found. Knowing they are the only ones to have this information, they would be highly excited and motivated to share it with their peers.

Give them control

Hand over certain responsibility to your students in the classroom as well as their day today life. You can assign a new student every day to take the class attendance or to handover and collect notebooks or to write the date and name of the subject of the board and you can keep rotating these responsibility to keep them involved with their own class.

Sometimes it is good to know let them decide what they want to do. Put the topic in front of them and ask them to give you ideas in which they can do their homework with a new method.

Motivation outside of classroom

Students need motivation not only in school, but outside of school too. Give them various personal tasks to keep them interested in various things. Ask them to help their parents cook at home and come and share the experience with their class. They can also be asked to give a short speech about the news item they like which they’ve seen on the television or read in the newspaper. You can ask them to plant a seed in their house and give a regular update about it to the class. The children can accompany their parents to their workplace to understand the process and share experiences with other children.

Thus, children will be motivated in all spheres of life and not just at school.

Above all, if teachers and parents themselves are motivated to enhance the lives of students, it is not a challenging task to make the students feel the same way.

Your children tend to learn not only from their text books, but from everything around them. Everything they learn in this period shapes them into an independent human being. They will make career choices depending on what they learn. They will make life choices based on the ideology they develop during their upbringing.

An ever naughty girl can become a disciplined professional. A shy boy can grow up to be a motivational speaker. And as parents, you can make such a difference for your child. That of course, will not happen if you make decisions for them. A better approach is to inculcate certain life skills to mould them into self-sufficient human beings who can confidently build a remarkable future for themselves.

The best part is you don’t have to make them sit and listen to a big lecture about life. That will only make them uninterested and sleepy. All you have to do is have them participate in various fun and innovative activities exposing them to these life skills. You just need to nurture them further.

Interaction and team work

Survival for the human race is social relations. Your child should know how to make a friend, how to interact with people and how to be a team player.

You can start with simple things like letting your child answer the phone and speaking politely with the person that is calling. Let them answer the door and talk to the courier delivery man, the man collecting newspaper or telephone bills, etc.

Have your child invite his/her friends from school or the neighborhood. Let them do a puzzle together, paint a wall together, create decorations for festivals, create a map of the neighborhood etc. You child will learn to make decisions along with a team, taking the opinion of others into consideration, voicing their own opinion and backing their team up.

This life skill would benefit when they meet new people, when they’re made to work with people they are not fond of or when they’re working with a team at their workplace. With your assistance, testing the water and acting accordingly will come naturally to them.

Problem solving

Conflicts and problems are an unavoidable part of life. Rationally look at something, analyze it and come up with a solution is rare in people.

Ask your child the question “why” whenever possible and have them find the answer. Avoid hiding mild family problems from children, rather discuss with them and ask for their opinion.

If they have a fight with someone, let them tell you about the background and the reason behind the argument. Discuss it with them and encourage them to discuss this with the person they have had a fight.

When the sugar in the house gets over have them run to the store to buy some, make them change the batteries of the remote as soon as they die. Let them fix something that is broken under your supervision and let them make mistakes. Once they make a mistake they will try a different approach. This will enhance quick thinking and trying to find a solution in more than one ways.

Independence

You don’t want a child who calls you every time something goes wrong, who makes you serve them dinner every night neither you want to be the parent who’s doing bank work or paper work for your child forever. Your job is to make sure that your child can do everything on their own in a timely manner.

Get them in the habit of making their bed every morning; have them make their own milk / cereal; have them go to their classes or school by themselves. Daily tasks will lead to them taking bigger things under control too.

Take them with you to the bank, to pay the bills, to buy groceries and let them take over after a few times. Have them fill their own forms for school or insurance etc.

The sooner your child learns to take control of things, the more independent he/she will be.

Basic life skills go a long way. You are making their future look good already by finding innovative ways to inculcate life skills. You can become a very proud parent when you see your child follow the learning acquired by their own experiences.

All of us had that one teacher in school that we loved and that made a difference in our life. He/she was everything the other teachers were not! We got inspired, engaged and most importantly we learnt something valuable from that teacher.

What is that makes such teachers stand out? They are successful for a reason and they make it a point to do everything differently to get through to each child.

Goodbye boredom

Unlike many teachers, successful teachers give no room for boredom. Everything you teach can be made into a fun learning activity, which is called active learning. Cognitive studies have shown that children learn better by doing rather than watching and listening. Successful teacher take advantage of this fact and assign projects to ensure complete understanding of the subject matter whilst enjoying.

A science teacher creates an experiment of a certain principle; a math teacher creates sums based on the students or uses tools to solve math problems; an English teacher creates assignments like writing a book or a movie review, conversing with your parents in English or conduct interview of someone in English etc.

Depending on the objective of each topic, great teachers have created real life examples out of it to enhance holistic perception.

Student-centric approach

The most successful teachers are those who put the needs of the students before all. Every day is a new day and you have to evolve with it. You can’t be doing the same thing, the same way everyday just because you have to finish something.

The mood of the students, the previous class they attended, the weather outside can require you to alter your plans and go with the flow. If the students are bored, you may need an activity to stimulate their brain cells. If the students are energetic, you may need to channel those energies into a project that intensifies their curiosity. Small decisions such as, letting students sit in a circle instead of on benches, changing the arrangement of benches, sitting under a tree on a chilly day can help students get out of their rut.

Successful teachers know when to encourage students to do better. In a student-centric approach, negative feedback is never an option. Discussion of failures with a positive approach is much needed tool and they always give a constructive feedback to encourage students to try harder.

Consistent learners

The greatest teachers in the world are consistent learners. They never stop learning and exploring their subject matter. When they teach something they’ve learnt, they will not shy away from sharing all their knowledge. The only way they can keep inspiring their students is if they’re inspired to learn themselves.

Successful teachers purposely take help of their students to learn something outside of his/her expertise. This shows the students that their teacher can also be a student sometimes and they feel motivated to explore new topics.

Respect and consideration

Successful teachers respect the students for their opinions even though they may not agree. They find a way of discussing a few things other than the subject they teach and get to know the thoughts and ideas of their students. Every student is unique and every student must be appreciated and respected for what they are. Successful teachers don’t have favorites. All their students are their favorite!

A successful teacher feels that the learning of the students is the greatest success and takes the responsibility to make a difference. We salute the successful teachers who teach differently.