Strategies to motivate Students

In the article "20 Strategies for Motivating Reluctant Learners" written by Katrina Schwartz she talks about a workshop she went to where the speaker, Kathy Perez, discussed 20 strategies to motivate students. I found this article specifically interesting because for another class (EDUC 8P16) I am doing my project on students in my placement who are disengaged in reading. I felt like this article that is about motivating disengaged learners could help me with my project to come up with strategies that I could potentially use myself.

Perez states 20 strategies to engage students and many of them are very interesting. She promotes a lot of brain breaks to give students time to digest what they are learning. Perez also puts a lot of importance on allowing students to discuss things with each other and work in groups to really get engaged and interested in learning. Another strategy that I particularly liked was something Perez called "Guessing Game" where students would be given an opportunity to debate and predict an answer to a question before you tell them the answer. By allowing students to make predictions it gets them more invested in the answer, and therefore more engaged!

Many of these 20 strategies I can see myself using in my own classroom because I think truly getting students motivated and engaged in lessons is a key aspect of education. Students learn much more when they are interested and want to learn. These strategies will also come in use for me as I work on my project to try and motivate students in my placement classroom who are disengaged in reading. I could use the guessing game strategy by having students predict what will happen in books to get them invested in reading what actually happens in the end.

Here is a link to the article.