{"id":21,"date":"2017-04-24T01:15:13","date_gmt":"2017-04-24T06:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/brandonheidt\/?p=21"},"modified":"2017-04-24T01:15:13","modified_gmt":"2017-04-24T06:15:13","slug":"student-motivation-and-lesson-planning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/brandonheidt\/2017\/04\/24\/student-motivation-and-lesson-planning\/","title":{"rendered":"Student Motivation and Lesson Planning"},"content":{"rendered":"

Motivation in education is very key for teachers. \u00a0If the students are not motivated to do homework or to do well on a test, it can have disastrous consequences for everyone and result in a very long semester. \u00a0There are several ways in which a teacher can motivate students. \u00a0The most common form of motivation is known as extrinsic motivation (Woolfolk, 477). \u00a0In other words, it’s doing well to avoid punishment, or in the classroom, a bad grade. \u00a0A teacher may also provide incentives (bribes) for students to help motivate them to do well. \u00a0Hooray for candy and stickers! \u00a0The other type of motivation is intrinsic motivation (Woolfolk, 476). \u00a0An intrinsically motivated student will take it upon themselves to do well in order to prove something to someone or themselves. \u00a0Unlike extrinsic motivation, intrinsically motivated people don’t need any incentives to do well.<\/p>\n

In my future classroom, I hope to create an environment that will help motivate students to do well. \u00a0One way in which I can foster this is through a student centered (constructivist) approach. \u00a0Depending upon whether I have tables or desks, I can push them together into smaller groups to help encourage students to work together. \u00a0Seeing as I hope to teach history, we can hold debates and discussions on historical issues and events. \u00a0The main reason I would like to do this is just to get ideas floating around the classroom. \u00a0I know a fair amount of history but other students may be able to provide another perspective to a certain issue that I cannot. \u00a0If a student found something interesting during discussion, I would encourage them to research it further and they may get some extra credit out of it (just some more motivation for them).<\/p>\n

Getting students to understand the facts and concepts they need to succeed is another key aspect of what a teacher does. \u00a0In history it can often be difficult for students to understand some concepts because they feel that history is just a series of dates. \u00a0It also doesn’t help that history teachers often teach out of a textbook, which makes the material all the more boring. \u00a0To help reduce the risk of this happening, teachers could reverse engineer (aka. Backward Design) their lesson plans so that they understand what the students need to know and how to go about teaching it.<\/p>\n

Backwards Design starts with stating the objectives, what do you want the students to know. \u00a0For example, if I were planning a lesson on World War I, I would want the students to understand the causes of the war, what the soldiers went through in the trenches, how technological innovations affected the war, and the effects the war had on Europe after it ended. \u00a0I would also need to state the key questions that need to be answered throughout the lesson. \u00a0In order to make sure that the students had a grasp on all of these concepts, I would need to test them. \u00a0I could do a boring old test (which does work well), but some concepts, like the experience of the soldiers in the trenches, cannot be captured in a simple test. \u00a0In order to gauge some of the other concepts, I would have to try something different; like a wartime journal where a soldier (played by a student) catalogs their experiences in the trenches. \u00a0What they went through on a daily basis, the paranoia they were feeling, what an attack was like, all sorts of things.<\/p>\n

Once the objectives and the assessments are in place, it is then time to draw out the lesson plan. \u00a0How are you going to go about portraying this information to the students to help them understand your key objectives. \u00a0For my World War I example, I could lecture at them (which would get most facts across), bring in videos of experts talking about some of the subject matter (like this one: https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=X2DLybNYta4), and also find actual journals and documents from that time period (primary sources) that help the portray what life was really like back then. \u00a0Once they’ve examined those documents we could hold a discussion and try to explain the rationale behind going to war, fighting for one’s country, and the effects that the war had. \u00a0The use of Backwards Design can greatly benefit a teacher, simplify their lesson plans, and save a ton of time.<\/p>\n

References:<\/p>\n