Modern technology has blessed us with many advancements in every sector. One such example of this is a school management software for schools and colleges that helps administrators to streamline every single activity of an institution. The entire education field is observing a great success but still, there are some traditional methods or we can say tricks via which schools can help students motivate themselves. And when it comes to helping children to motivate themselves, four qualities are described as essential for their overall growth and these are:
- Autonomy
- Competence
- Relatedness
- Relevance
Autonomy
Autonomy means providing student’s freedom of choice when it comes to learning and educators divides this into distinct categories which are:
- Organizational- where students can voice their opinions in sitting arrangements or learning groups.
- Procedural- where students can make the choice of homework of their liking from a list of assignments and what they would like to do for a final project.
However, some believe that there is the third category which exists and that they referred to as cognitive choice. It is a more efficient technique one wishes to promote the autonomy in students and it could include:
- Problem-based learning where each small group can suggest their solutions to the problems suggested by other groups or teachers.
- Students are participating in the creation of their homework assignments related to the current topic in the class.
- Students are sharing their problem-solving approach in class for different or same sets of problems.
Competence
Feedback is crucial for the students but there is certainly a way to give it. In research at Harvard, psychologists found that when we praise children for their intelligence, it makes them less willing in taking risks because it puts their knowledge at stake instead a more subtle way of doing this is not to praise the effort instead which student has put in completing the homework and project.
But, how will you handle the negative feedback which is as critical as positive feedback? If a student makes a mistake or does homework wrong then instead of criticising him and saying direct “no” use words like what if and “like”. For Example, “what if you would have done this instead of this?”
Words “AND” and “what if” can be used by teachers in their daily language very effectively to promote healthy learning among students.
Relatedness
Just because you are the teacher, you don’t have to act bossy. A humble and friendly relation with the teacher is the key element in promoting the self- learning attitude in the students. Below are four main suggestions in this regard:
- Discover their interests, dreams and hopes and take the genuine interest in them. Share some of your stories too.
- Act friendly and add some humour and joke in your teaching.
- Be focused on the learning of the student even if you have to take a different path for that. For example, if the student is not writing an essay then ask him about his favourite video game or perhaps football team and ask him to write an article on that.
Relevance
Once in a while ask your students to write about what they are learning in class, how it is related to their daily lives? Make it a part of your teaching process and doing such eight assignments in a semester will result in positive learning attitude in the students.
