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“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” - William Arthur Ward
A great teacher doesn’t merely intend to teach, he aspires to ignite in his students a lifelong love for learning. He is very aware that he cannot stay with his students for their entire life. At some point or the other, he will have to leave them to live their life on their own. So, he makes them fall in love with learning and ignites in them a motivation to keep learning throughout their life. By doing so, he prepares his students for a life full of curiosity, contentment, and success.
As great teachers, you also aspire to motivate your students to learn, and for this, you have to work to have them fall in love with learning. But this is a really challenging task. Learning is something students are least interested in. So, to help you with this challenging task, some actionable tips to motivate your students are given below:
1. Utilize innovative technological tools for teaching
‘Technology’ is like a magnetic force that attracts children towards it. Just bring a new technological tool, show it to your kids and, within a moment, you’ll have them questioning about its applications. Not only this, you’ll see their eagerness to utilize the new technology through their sparkling eyes. This implies that by utilizing technological tools for teaching, you can ignite your students’ interest in learning. So, given below is a list of some technological tools which you can utilize to motivate your students to learn:
- NUITEQ Snowflake:
NUITEQ Snowflake is a rewarding educational software. You can utilize it to enhance student engagement in your class or on distance. When your students are well-engaged, they are naturally motivated to learn. This software offers you interactive teacher-made lessons, planned in a careful and meticulous manner to fulfill your students’ learning needs. These lessons ignite your students’ curiosity for learning and captivate their attention. Moreover, NUITEQ Snowflake is easy to use and you can access it from any device of your choices such as a laptop, Chromebook, and any other mobile device.
- Document camera:
A document camera is an interesting technological tool to utilize in your classroom. It projects the images of documents and objects in a crystal clear manner and helps you give your students a visual idea of what you are trying to teach. As your students get to see the images of the concepts you teach, they no more find learning to be monotonous. Instead, they love to learn when they can see everything right in front of their eyes. As a result, they become motivated to learn. This makes a document camera a great tool for teaching.
- Tablets:
‘Tablets’, almost every child knows about them. Not only this, they love utilizing them. If you have a naughty child in your house, just give him a tablet and you’ll find him sitting silently in a corner, exploring the features of the device, watching videos on it, playing games, and so on. This is how interesting children find a tablet to be. So, if you make tablets an addition to your classroom, you’ll find your students becoming really interested to learn. The moment you name something, let’s say ‘The Respiratory system’, they’ll get excited to see the related videos about its functioning. Thus, you can easily motivate your students to learn by utilizing tablets as a tool for teaching.
2. Extend rewards and appreciation
‘Rewards and recognition’ work wonders as motivation boosters. When a child refuses to have food, just tell him that after finishing food, he’ll get chocolate as a reward and he’ll finish food quickly. This is simply because the chocolate- ‘reward’ motivated him to do so. You can try the same with your students as well. You can reward the best performers in class tests every month. Not only this, but you can also set rewards for the best performer in a homework assignment, and so on. Further, even if you conduct the rewards ceremony monthly, you should appreciate your students every day. Punctuality, discipline, and excellent performance in an activity are different things you can appreciate your students for. As you appreciate your students, they get motivated to keep up their good work. Thus, you can motivate your students to study by extending rewards and appreciation.
3. Go creative with teaching
As discussed above, to motivate your students to study, you have to try to make studying interesting for them. One of the simplest ways to do so is by getting creative with teaching. As you go creative with teaching by adding new elements in your teaching style, you eradicate boredom from the classroom environment. As a result, your students become interested in learning, which fuels their motivation to learn. Now, let’s discuss some simple ideas for you to go creative with teaching:
- Take them outdoors:
Staying in the same place for a long time, makes the brain feel dull. This makes it important for you to take your students outdoors for learning. You can do so easily when you don’t have much need to use your classroom’s interactive panel, for example. Just tell your students to take their books and notebooks along and take them outdoors under bright sunlight or shade of trees to learn.
- Give your students an opportunity to teach:
Your students put more effort into learning when they have to teach the concept learned to others afterward. Not only this, as your students teach their classmates, their understanding of the concepts also broadens. This gives them confidence in their ability to understand things well. As a result, they stop running away from complex concepts. Instead, they start utilizing their teacher mindset and get motivated to understand it despite its complexity. So, you should try to give your students an opportunity to teach. You can use this activity as an assignment and distribute different topics among your students to teach in class.
- Relate concepts to real-life examples:
One of the most basic reasons why students don’t feel motivated to learn is that they find it hard to relate concepts with real-life. This implies that if you succeed in relating concepts to real-life examples, your students will start feeling motivated to learn. For example, if you are a science teacher and you have to teach ‘Joule’s Law of Heating’, you can give your students real-life examples related to it by turning on the torch of your smartphone. After some time, your smartphone will become heated. This way, your students will be able to relate Joule’s law of heating with real-life. Similarly, you can utilize different real-life examples to make your students fall in love with learning and become lifelong learners.
4. Add the ‘play element’ in your teachings
Ask your students to study and they nod in disagreement, but if you ask your students to play, they nod in agreement. Isn’t it so true? Children love playing. They are ever-ready to play. You never have to motivate them to play; their motivation to play comes from within. This implies that if you add the ‘play element’ in your teaching, your students will fall in love with learning too. As a result, they’ll become self-motivated to learn. Given below are some ideas to help you add the play element in your teachings:
- Conduct competitions in class:
The spirit of competition makes a boring thing interesting. So, if you divide your class into teams and conduct educational competitions, learning will become interesting for them and they’ll get motivated to learn. For example, if you are a Political Science teacher and you conduct a world map filling activity in the class, you can divide your students into four groups. Then, you can one by one point in different countries and ask different teams to guess their names. This way, your students will become curious about the world map and they will remember what they learn for a long time.
- Utilize online game-like activities:
Game-like educational activities are one of the simplest ways to add the play element to your lessons. Your students will love playing them. If you introduce them to your class, you won’t have to motivate your students to learn anymore. They’ll be self-motivated to learn and in fact, they’ll wait for your class to commence. So, you should try to utilize game-like activities while teaching in class. You can easily find such game-like activities from different websites like NUITEQ Snowflake.
- Play real-life games with your students:
Along with online game-like activities, you can also play real-life games with your students. For this, you should select a game that fulfills the purpose of what you are trying to teach. For example, if you are a Science teacher, and intend to make your students learn different diagrams, then you can play Pictionary with them. While playing, ask your students to draw science diagrams on the board, one by one and the rest of the class will recognize what the diagram is about.
5. Assign group tasks whenever possible
Children love to spend time with their friends. You can utilize their love for their friends to ignite their interest in learning. For this, you must assign group tasks to your students whenever possible. Let them form their own groups and work with their friends. As they work together in groups, they’ll have fun while studying. As a result, they won’t feel bored and stay motivated to learn. So, you should assign group tasks to your students whenever possible, both during class and as homework. For example, if you are an English teacher and you assign essay writing assignments to your students, try assigning it to them in groups.
Learning is a lifelong process. To prepare your students to make the most out of it, a teacher ignites in them a love for learning. It is only in the presence of this love for learning that your students can stay motivated to learn and become lifelong learners. Further, you are great teachers, and you have the ability to make the love for learning bloom in your students’ hearts and the above-mentioned tips will assist you with the process.
