UNIT 4 - MOTIVATION

1. TYPES OF MOTIVATION


  • INTRINSIC motivation - inner interest in completing a task, in making the effort to achieve a goal and learn. Relies on internal, personal factors such as needs, interests, curiosity.
  • EXTRINSIC motivation - external input/reward that makes you willing to do the effort of completing an activity or achieving a goal. Relies on external, environmental factors such as rewards and punishments that has very little to do with the task itself. It is limited in time.


2. MOTIVATION THROUGH ACTIVITIES


One or the other type might be developed depending on the chosen approach/methodology and the design of the activity:

  1. BEHAVIOURAL APPROACHES
  • Source of Motivation: Extrinsic
  • Important Influences: Reinforcers, rewards, incentives, and punishers.
  • Reward – an attractive object or event is supplied as a consequence of a behaviour.
  • Incentive – an object or event that encourages or discourages behaviour.
  1. HUMANISTIC APPROACHES
  • Source of Motivation: Intrinsic
  • Important Influences: Need for self-esteem, self-fulfilment, and self- determination.
  • Humanistic interpretation – An approach to motivation that emphasises personal freedom, choice, self-determination, and which is taken into account for personal growth.
  • Activities from this approach should allow students to choose - range of choice and freedom so they can decide which topics to work on.
  1. COGNITIVE APPROACHES
  • Source of Motivation: Intrinsic
  • Important Influences: Beliefs, attributions for success and failure, expectations.

2.1. Planning to motivate students


Selecting and designing tasks involves not only a sound understanding of the material to be taught but also matching the level of work to that of the students. It is also vital that the subject matter is appropriate for the individuals in the class.


Hence:

  1. Provide opportunities for students to reflect on and share their personal experiences and their feelings about the topic being studied (this reassures the students and allows the teacher an opportunity to plan appropriate tasks).
  2. Draw on what students already know and can do to stimulate their interest and imagination.


3. TASKS AND TEACHING

  • Select tasks that are challenging and achievable.
  • For effective learning to take place, learners need to understand what they are trying to achieve, and want to achieve it.
  • Understanding and commitment follow when the students have some part in deciding goals and identifying criteria for assessment.
  • These criteria should be discussed with the students, providing examples of how the criteria can be met and engaging the students in peer and self-assessment.
  • Teaching styles. Children learn in different ways so when planning lessons, use a variety of strategies to cater for different learning styles.

4. FEEDBACK

  • CORRECT FEEDBACK is essential. Not just giving feedback, but doing it right - the way in which a teacher gives feedback on a pupil’s work has an enormous impact on their motivation.
  • There has been a great deal of research into the impact of feedback on children’s learning and one of the most important findings is that children only focus on marks and ignore the comments that accompany them.
  • Therefore, if the teacher wants the pupil to improve learning s/he should: 
  1. Pinpoint the learner’s strengths and advise how to develop them.
  2. Be clear and constructive aboutany weaknesses and how they might be addressed.
  3. Provide opportunities for learners to improve upon their work and with a clear understanding of what to do next. Adjust teaching to take account of the results of assessment -> positive feedback, ways of doing the activity in a different way.

So, in order to motivate students to learn effectively teachers must provide a safe and stimulating environment. Within this setting, the teacher must provide a curriculum which is relevant to them, takes into account their learning needs and builds on their prior knowledge and experience.


Let’s see some examples of motivating activities…

1) OLYMPIC SPORTS

Our group was presented with the following idea for an activity: 

“The teacher will give the students a poem about the Olympic Games and the students will find words related to sports and connect them to pictures which have been brought to class by the teacher”.

We believe it’s not motivating because poetry is quite unrelated to sports or the Olympics, so students wouldn’t find a meaningful connection or understand why it’s being used. Furthermore having the first contact with new words without any visual aid, only the written symbols, it’s not very impactful - as it’s explained here. Because of this, we decided to suggest an alternative: investigating about the Olympics and researching about their favourite Olympic sports.

In a 5th grade class with an A2 level, we show them the official site of the Olympic Games. In their sports section, they can find the definitions for every sport that’s part of the event and sort them out between Summer and Winter Olympic Games. Each sport is accompanied by an icon of a figure practising said sport, so they have an initial image of what the sport is about. We scroll through the sections for a bit so they can se all the competitions that happen at the Games, maybe discover new ones. This is a good way of taking advantage of the technological resources available.

Then, we divide the class in two groups: Winter and Summer Olympics. Then, these two groups are subdivided into different areas of sport (athletics, water sports, mountain sports, ice sports, ball sports, etc.). The areas are given by the teacher, but within those, each group can choose which sports they will focus on (ex. The group about athletics decides to investigate about 100 meters sprint, Olympic march, triple jump and high jump). The groups scroll through the Olympic’s site and research about their chosen sports, and through this project they will come across not only sports names but also related vocabulary like track, court, rink, certain rules, etc.

They have to create a poster on a cardboard with all the information they consider key to understand the sport, including some drawings. Each poster will be unique since there is no required structure. After this, each group will present it to the class and all the cardboards will be stuck to a long paper and put on the classroom wall.

2) THE MOST PECULIAR TALE

This activity is also designed for 5th grade of Primary, with the goal of practising creative writing. The general layout of the activity is that, in groups, each member of the group will write a sentence that could fit in a story, and then pass the paper to the next teammate without showing what they wrote. After everyone has written a sentence, the whole story is read out loud. Because there are no topic requirements, each sentence is random and the result is a funny and unexpected tale.

The class is divided in groups of 5. Each group receives a paper that’s been folded 5 times by the teacher, creating 5 sections. Each section has an initial guide: 
  1. At first…,
  2. Then, he discovered…
  3. Afterwards…
  4. Meanwhile…
  5. Finally… 
The first student fills the first section, writing a sentence that would fit for the beginning of a tale. Then they turn the paper into the next section and pass it to the second student, who can’t see the fist one and has to write a sentence fitting for the guide they’re given. They repeat the process until the last one has done it, and then the paper is unfolded and the stories are read aloud.

This activity is useful to practice creative but guided writing and narrative structures, since they have to adequate what they write to the moment of the story they are given (not the same events happen at the beginning and the end of a story). It is also motivating since the result is very random and it will sure make the students laugh.

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