Motivating Students

Motivating Students

            The motivational technique that seems to be most effective in my clinical placement is to introduce the day’s lesson by reviewing the key terms and concepts that students have previously learned and will need to keep in mind for the lesson. This type of anticipatory set ensures that students are on the same page as the teacher, and helps provide a quick recap for anything students may have missed due to absences. After reviewing the key concepts my host teacher will lay out the activity in steps, starting with the first set of instructions and informing students about what the next phase of the lesson will be. Once students have begun the second part of an activity, she delivers the instruction for the third, and so on.

            By spacing out instruction it prevents her students from feeling overwhelmed and helps to “chunk” the information. Another important factor for this type of instruction is that my host teacher is very aware of the amount of time she gives students to work on certain parts of an assignment. Instead of giving students the entire lesson instruction in the beginning and risking them rushing through it she carefully paces out the lesson. She communicates with her students asking who has finished the portion of the lesson and who could use a few more minutes, which helps to keep students from becoming bored and veering off task and disrupting those that are not yet finished.

            Awareness of pacing a lesson and making expectations clear for students are two areas of instruction that I would like to make improvements in. During one of my lessons I made the mistake of providing students with too much time to complete the task and not enough instruction for the second part of the lesson. This resulted in many students choosing to not start the lesson right away, instead talking to their friends and veering off topic. For those that did start the lesson immediately, many finished early and quickly brought out their cell phones and iPods once they were done, assuming that instruction was over. This experience left me feeling very rattled, knowing that I had made a mistake that could cost me my lesson. Instead of allowing the disruptions to continue my host teacher helped me regain the focus of the students and continue on with the lesson. It was much more difficult to regain the attention and focus that I had lost than it would have been to maintain engagement throughout had I been more aware of my errors.

            Keeping my mistakes in mind, I conducted the same lesson for the following class, which went much more smoothly. My host teacher set the tone at the very beginning of class, stating that cell phones would be confiscated if they were not put away. I picked up on my host teacher’s strategies for maintaining an efficient pace with the lesson, and was relieved that students seemed to respond very well to it. We were able to complete all of the pieces of the lesson and still engage in a discussion of the lesson, ensuring that we were not simply “checking boxes” off of the lesson plan, but instead were aiding in the students’ overall comprehension of the material.