Motivating the Unmotivated

From this Quora question: How can teachers motivate students who are not interested in a subject or course material?

#1-Start by opening their minds to the topic with a curiosity stimulating and/or relevant “hook.” This could be a short video clip with a question, a demonstration, a true story, etc…

If you just “start” your audience may not care about the topic. This is true about any presentation or lesson. Since students take courses that they are required to take, they may not be interested but know that they have to take it to graduate.

It is well worth your time during lesson planning to find/create a hook that would make you interested as well.

#2-Once you have students interested, to keep them engaged the lesson should involve teaching strategies that keep your students wanting to continue. This could include: a hands-on activity, partner activity, teaching through a game (I made up games that taught my chemistry and kept students interested-this was fun for me as well!), small group discussion, debate, short project, role play, etc..

#3-Use a scoring guide from the beginning so that students are clear regarding how they can earn the maximum credit for the assignment. In this way, the students know exactly what is expected of them and this helps them stay engaged in the lesson.

#4-When you assess, use a variety of techniques so that you don’t take papers home to grade and students get instant feedback. Some examples of this are: gallery walk (students place their work around the room and use your scoring guide to assess each other’s work), partner review with a scoring guide, online quiz that is scored instantly through Google Forms, structured Socratic Seminars in small groups (groups of 8 work well) where you walk around giving credit as you monitor accuracy, team white board work, etc.. Allow students to edit their work after their initial scoring guide assessment. This is for learning purposes and helps them achieve mastery.

Final Thought: The time you take to plan a hook, a scoring guide, an engaging activity and assessment will pay off BIG time because happy engaged students are much easier to manage and everyone, including you, will have more fun!