Motivation – simple strategies to add to our classrooms

Below is a summary of my recent plenary in Lisbon:

 

Teachers have clear aims for their lessons but these are not always shared and negotiated with or understood by students. Under the pressures of school work, often studying and being tested in more than 10 subjects, students’ motivation can flag and even disappear.

 

My contention is that in order to create and maintain motivation, students need:

·      a sense of direction and challenge

·      scaffolding versus teacher centredness

·      to understand and celebratesuccess in learning

·      ateacherwith the rightattitude  

·      motivating exam preparation

·      to have fun

 

1.   a sense of direction and challenge

 

It is vital for students to know what they are learning as well as why and how. They need to be part of the conversation and understand the learning journey.

 

Everyone can experience feelings of resolve and a commitment to think more and to dare more … and of being poised to learn and ready to take the next step.

Martin V. Covington, The Will to Learn, Cambridge University Press

 

Students need to understand WHY we do tasks, especially those that seem like a game, in class. They are under a lot of pressure preparing for exams and don’t want to think they are wasting time.

If we do a listening based on a pop song, we should ask students to think about how this task can help them develop their English skills, eliciting the following:

 

How is this helping you now?

To be able to understand song lyrics

To practise listening to authentic English

To watch English language TV / films

To learn new vocabulary

To practise particular grammar

 

Later?

To have successful conversations in English by decoding what is heard

To follow lectures in English

To build oracy and listening skills

To pass listening papers in Exams

 

It’s a great idea to get into the habit of asking ‘why did we just do that activity? How does it help develop your English skills / prepare for the exam?’ So that eventually students will understand our methodology / aims without being prompted.

 

Tasks / activities should have the right level of challenge – not too hard (demotivating) or too easy (boring)

 

we feel best in flow.. fully involved in meeting a challenge, solving a problem, discovering something new. Most activities that produce flow also have clear goals…

Csikszentmihalyi, Finding Flow, Basic Books, 1998

 

 

2.   scaffolding versus teacher centredness

 

Tasks should be scaffolded (see the earlier post below for details)

 

Jerome Bruner said:

The task may need to be simplified / broken down into manageable chunks

They made need to be shown how to do things

Their frustration needs to be managed

They need to see model of what they need to achieve 

And they need to be engaged and find solutions themselves!

 

For example, if we want our students to write a poem, we can introduce this poem to them and then get them to write their own version using the frame below.

 

I don’t like people

who can’t listen

who never read books

who smoke while I’m still eating

and who gossip about others.

I like people

who are energetic

who love children

who fight against stupidity

and who care about the fate of our planet.

Writing Simple Poems, Holmes & Moulton, CUP

 

 

I don’t like people

who can’t ........

who never .......

who ...........................

and ..................

I like people

who are ..............

who love ...................

who fight against ………

and who care about ..................

 

or a story writing task like this:

 

Once upon a time there was a ....................  girl who lived in a .................... village.  Her mother and father were very .................. She liked to play in the ................... with her ..................... friend, who was called .......................

One day they found a ........................... and they took it to the police station. The policeman was very ......................... and told them they could keep it. They were very ..................................

 

By filling in the gaps with their chosen vocabulary, students will have created a model of ‘good’ writing. There is no need initially to have the pressure of worrying about all the sub-skills needed to write texts.

 

Everyone can be successful if we

 

achieve ‘a realistic match between the individual’s present capacities and the demands of the achievement task’ 

Henry Widdowson

 

3.   to understand and celebratesuccess in learning

 

We should avoid making students feel that they are failing. No one likes to feel like a failure and it’s not a good starting point for making more effort in class.

 

All individuals can be characterised by two learned drives, a motive to approach success and a motive to avoid failure.

The Will to Learn, Martin V Covington, CUP

 

 

4.   ateacherwith the rightattitude  

 

Teacher attitudes are crucial – we are SO important sometimes in the tiniest almost imperceptible ways for maintaining and increasing our students’ motivation.

 

Carl Jung’s model of teacher / parentis a great 4 step approach to remember. Teaching is just as much about shaping the emotional development of students as about teaching the nuts and bolts of the English language.

 

Think – give information

Direct – give direction

Feel – care about well-being

Do – give confidence to carry out work

 

And this is also a very nice strategy to follow:

 

The Pygmalion Effect

 

High expectations lead to better performance: 

Rosenthal & Lenore, psychologists

said teachers should do the following to help students reach their potential

 

Expect the best

Be charitable when things go wrong

Be aware of how we give subliminal messages

Use positive reinforcement

Ignore students ‘bad’ moods

 

5.   motivating exam preparation

 

Don’t give students practice tests which they will do badly in and feel like failures. Consider how demotivating that can be.

Instead

•       Allow students to collaborate on tasks

•       Break tasks down and do small bits (together)

•       Show models of good examples e.g. essays / videos of speaking tests (handbooks)

•       Share marking criteria 

•       Let students do practice tests for homework

 

Don’t forget to have FUN!!! 

 

Remember the philosophy of Winnie the Pooh

 

You’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think.

A.A.Milne

Why is Creativity Necessary in the English Language Classroom

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiM6uwG26rE

Here's the link for my talk.

And here are some of the activities I mentioned:

My cat / husband is a .................. cat/husband

Go round the class and each student needs to supply a different adjective to fill the gap. Do it alphabetically to add to the challenge.

Talk for 30 seconds on a topic 

Encouraging students to not just stick to a true fact but to think and talk 'outside the box'.

Show a picture with people in it. Ask students to (a) describe what's happening (b) what do they think happened before this and (c) what is going to happen next

Drama / role plays e.g interview the person they have just read about in their course book

Gapped stories - give students a short story (based on the previous unit) and leave out the adjectives and adverbs. Students work in pairs and fill them in.

e.g.

Once upon a time there was a ....................  girl who lived in a .................... village.  Her mother and father were very .................. She liked to play in the ................... with her ..................... friend, who was called .......................

One day they found a ........................... and they took it to the police station. The policeman was very ......................... and told them they could keep it. They were very ..................................

Poems

Introduce a poem, ask students which lines they liked, how it made them feel etc and then get them to write their own version with a frame.

e.g.

I don’t like people

who can’t listen

who never read books

who smoke while I’m still eating

and who gossip about others.

I like people

who are energetic

who love children

who fight against stupidity

and who care about the fate of our planet.

FROM:  Writing Simple Poems, Holmes & Moulton, CUP

I don’t like people

who can’t ........

who never .......

who ...........................

and ..................

I like people

who are ..............

who love ...................

who fight against …………..

and who care about .................

Scaffolding - what and how

Scaffolding – what and how

I was thinking about this term and how we often use it when talking about teaching young children. But I am not sure that we all understand the term in the same way or how important the idea of supporting and nurturing learning is with all students whatever their age or level or even the subject we are teaching. So, I have decided to unpick the idea here.

The term was first used in the educational context by Jerome Bruner (1915-2016), an American psychologist who specialized in human cognitive psychology and cognitive learning theory in educational psychology. 

He identified six specific aspects of scaffolding are essential to support learning:

1. Learners need to be made interested in a task

The child is curious…wants to make sense of things… is open and receptive… experimental.. bold… not afraid of making mistakes… is patient…can tolerate an extraordinary amount of uncertainty, confusion, ignorance and suspense.. 

John Holt, 1968

Although we are all born with an abundance of curiosity and interest in the world around us, with the average 4 year old asking around 390 questions a day, it is a tragic fact that schools have the capacity for numbing that curiosity and dulling interest in learning.

How can we pique learners’ interest then? To start with we need to take into account the interests of our students and ensure we use age and level appropriate material for creating contexts for language that will draw them in. For example, illustrated story books for children, popular songs for teens and newspaper articles of interest to our adult classes. 

A strong start is crucial for any lesson. With very young learners playing ‘what’s in the box?’ can really excite and engage them. You have a brightly decorated large box to use and every lesson you put a toy, object or picture inside that relates to the topic of the day e.g. a banana if the topic is food or a toy elephant if you will be listening to the song “Nellie the elephant’. Once the children are settled at the start of the lesson, you bring out the box and together chant ‘what’s in the box?’ and the children can take turns guessing what is inside. By the time you open the box, curiosity will definitely be aroused.

A cheeky way I have of starting lessons with teens and adults is by telling them to close their books, as I have something to share with them and I recount an (hopefully amusing or strange) anecdote that either is or seems real and answer their questions about what happened to me and lo and behold that leads into the topic of the lesson…

Tasks that intrigue and challenge students are the best. For example, I bring in a box of what seems like rubbish – old boxes, plastic bottles, newspapers, string etc. and ask students to work in groups to create a model of an innovative form of transport. 

We, teachers, have to put our thinking hats on to create tasks that generate the initial interest and hold students’ attention.

 

2. The task may need to be simplified / broken down into manageable chunks

This is key – a step by step approach is crucial to ensure students can do a task successfully. For example, imagine you want your students (of any age) to act out a restaurant role play using food vocabulary and the functional language associated with ordering food and talking about likes and dislikes. Consider each element students need to achieve that – reviewing food vocabulary, names of dishes, reading a menu, introducing and/or practising ‘I’d like’ versus ‘I like’ etc., choosing which language to include, focus on pronunciation and polite intonation as well as the rising intonation in questions. So, when planning the lesson, work backwards and create a checklist of what students need and ensure that these threads are all there so that students can enjoy the satisfaction at the end of the lesson of a task well done.

3. They made need to be shown how to do things

Before students start doing an exercise in pairs or groups, I always do one or two of the questions together as a class. I do these slowly and point out what mechanics / skills are involved, so that everyone is clear what they need to do. I will also monitor them closely as they start work independently and go over the process with students who need a bit more help.

4. Their frustration needs to be managed

This is an interesting one. It is too easy to blame students when they stall or give up on a task, but we should consider our role here. 

We can pre-empt frustration by meticulously going through the first three stages but even then, things can go awry. I always monitor what students are doing, encouraging and stepping in to help if necessary. It’s not just young children who get frustrated if the picture they are colouring gets squashed up, adult students can get stalled or confused and want to give up on tasks, too. 

Consider, also how you group students when they are engaged in a task. It may be a good idea to think about their personalities, group dynamics and language levels in different skills to make sure they have the right balance to cheer and inspire each other.

And pay attention to how students are managing doing a task. Awareness of mood and frustration levels is key for teachers.

5. They need to see model of what they need to achieve 

Consider the value of using models as well as giving instructions. In the example above of the restaurant role play in Step 2, can you find a video, a listening or a text which can act as a template for students own role play?

You may want high level students to write a persuasive essay and give a presentation based on it, can you give some examples e.g. Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech

6. And they need to be engaged and find solutions themselves!

It is a fine line between supplying scaffolding for tasks and becoming too teacher centred.

Carl Jung’s model of a teacher / parent, suggest a four-step approach and this chimes well with the concept of scaffolding:

Think – give information

Direct – give direction

Feel – care about well-being and success

Do – give confidence to carry out work

The final step is key. Students need us to give the right amount of support and encouragement, so that they can be successful and know that they have found the right answer / done a great job themselves.