Motivational Lessons

 

The purpose of this article is to raise awareness of an approach to teaching which emphasizes acquisition through enjoyment. We need to implant delight within the planning process and to reflect on ways of increasing it in our evaluations and future teaching.

THINK  FUN!

We only need to remember our own 'best' teachers to realize that positive humour is an effective aid to learning. We should seek opportunities to use humour in daily classroom practice, but this is not always a common practice.

There are numerous reasons for this which include

(a) teacher tension in relation to behaviour and control, and

(b) that somehow this will lead to a 'dumbing-down' of the curriculum.

Teachers should try to fear less and rely more in being spontaneous as regards positive humour.

SURPRISE!

Introducing the unexpected is a simple method of engaging pupils. A polite class is not necessarily an engaged class and if we are to avoid passive-listening syndrome there is little that can improve the shock of the unexpected. Methods of achieving this fall into two particular modes...

1. Teacher doing the unexpected

2. Pupils being asked to do the unexpected - The answers are X, Y, Z. What are the questions?  

There are innumerable variations on the two examples given but in the latter a guiding principle would be to look for opportunities to invert the norm.

EXPERIMENT, USE THE “6 SENSES”

Basically, look for methods of 'doing' things that are not traditionally 'doing' activities. For example, when studying locational writing in narrative genre, how better to introduce this than to engage in some 'plain'-air writing.

Where we are already engaging in experiential activities we can also ask ourselves how best we can further expand opportunities. This approach is undoubtedly labour-intensive but the benefits are long-lived.

SHARE  ANECDOTES WITH YOUR CLASS

Pupils want their teachers to be 'real' people. Personal anecdotes are a powerful way of achieving this and in one sense they are a modelling tool i.e. they 'model' the relationship between what is occurring in the classroom and the world beyond it. This encourages empathy in the pupils who are more likely to make connections between what is occurring in the classroom and their own everyday existence.

KEEP A LIVELY PACE!

A  significant finding of the research project 'Effective Teachers of Literacy' was that '..the lessons of the effective teachers were all conducted at a brisk pace.'

This does NOT mean that the pupils have no time to think. In order to 'Think Brisk' the teacher needs refocusing strategies and a sense of dynamism within the lesson structure itself. Techniques such as 'deadlining' provide pupils with both a goal and a sense of purpose.

HIGH-LEVEL QUESTIONING.

There is a clear need for the application of reflective teaching methodology within the arena of questioning.

We need to consider the skills we are eliciting when asking questions of pupils. A teacher who mainly asks recall-type questions in a science lesson will mainly ask the same kind of questions in a Literacy Hour. Reflecting upon this skills-base and consciously increasing its breadth will engage a greater number of learners.

The other essential technique is pre-questioning. By asking questions before an activity or indeed the reading of a passage or text and then instructing pupils to listen/look for the answers during it, we give them a reason to listen / engage.