I really enjoyed reading Chapter 7. It has some very good key points about students being motivated. The book states, “Motivation can be deeply connected to students’ prior experiences with success and failure.” I agree with this statement, and I have actually noticed it in a school setting before. I work with a young boy who does not try anymore with his school work. He believes he fails at everything he tries to accomplish. This is because he has never had any positive feedback from his teachers. From reading this chapter, I am worried that his feelings toward school will get worse instead of better.
I learned that teachers should encourage all of their students after reading this chapter. Sometimes a child’s feelings about school could come from the teachers actions. Conley states, low-achieving students tend to receive more teacher criticism, less praise, and less helpful feedback than high-achieving students do.” This is really sad to me. I believe that teachers should try to encourage all of their students. They should never make some students feel that they are not important because they are low achievers. The teacher should try to make those students feel that they are important and that they can do anything they set their minds to.
All teachers should try to motivate their students in as many ways as they can. One way that teachers could motivate students is through working with interesting content. My fourth grade teacher used mysteries to get us interested in reading. She knew we loved books like the Hardy Boys, so she used those types of books to get us more involved with reading. Teachers should also present content in interesting ways. This would motivate students to listen while the teacher is teaching. The teacher could use digital text, magazines, and videos instead of just a textbook. These are a couple that I found interesting, but I plan to use different types of motivation in the classroom.
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I agree with you about motivation being connected to students' prior failure and sucessful experiences. How do you think the young boy's future teachers can build his motivation and confidence level to help him achieve success? We say that teachers should use interesting materials that will motivate students in the learning process. What if you have a diverse classroom where all students are interested in different things? How would you choose the materials or information to use for motivation that will meet the interest levels of all students?
ReplyDeleteBrittany,
ReplyDeleteI like that quote as well. I firmly believe that we learn tons from the things we do not succeed in. I think about the many times i have done something wrong, or not understood, and messed up really bad, but how much i learned from that. I probably remember the things i did wrong more than the things i did right because they laid so heavy on my brain. With that thought in mind, and your statement about low achieving students receiving less praise and such from the teachers, how can we take this and flip it around? How can we as teachers, take the times our students do not succeed in something, and utilize it to benefit them even more in the long run? We have to think about the fact though, that they may be seriously discouraged after not succeeding at something. So maybe, we should even begin by changing the students mindset for when they do make mistakes, to not feel defeated. This is so rich and could go so much further.