It shows your students that you care about their interests and their desire to make the day more relevant to their own lives.it gives students something to do that they care about.it gives them a mental break, which has a positive effect on work production.So…why not let students have time to do the things that we keep telling them to stop doing and give them time to do things that they feel connected to? This will make learning time more productive because: The most common negative things I hear from kids are “This is boring,” “What does this have to do with my life?” “I don’t care about this.” The most common things I hear in classrooms related to behavior include: stop talking, stop doodling, stop sleeping, stop daydreaming, stop humming, put that book away (we are not doing that right now), and stop getting out of your seat. What makes sense to me is to give the students time to do the exact things we keep telling them not to do. I have done a lot of thinking over the years about what kind of breaks are best for the whole class. Imagine how long a seven-year-old should work before needing a break. Studies show that adults are much more productive when they work in 52 minute increments with 17 minute breaks in between. Research shows that taking breaks is beneficial to work production. Students get to work towards something they like.Ģ.

Give students time for preferred activities.Īnother great strategy to motivate students is to give them breaks to engage in activities they enjoy, if they have met certain expectations.įor instance, if students complete a writing activity, they may play a game, as an example.ġ. using encouraging words and having a positive attitude.tapping into different learning strengths (e.g, some students learn better with verbal input, others with visual, etc.).Teachers use many strategies to get students motivated to learn. Until then, they just might need us to give them a reason to care. I think we all hope that over time students who are not interested or motivated to complete the work, will find something about school that they see as genuinely interesting and worth learning about. No matter how many times he told me to pay attention, my brain automatically went elsewhere, because there was no internal motivation to learn about it. It kind of reminds me of when my ex-boyfriend talked to me about football. No matter how much we tell them that they have to listen, have to stop talking, have to complete their work, they continue the same behaviors. It is hard to put effort into something you don’t care about. Then we have our students who do not feel an internal connection to school. I had to be scared for my own future before I acted.Īll kids are different…some find the value in school because they genuinely want to learn and know more, others do worry about their future, others want to please their parents and teachers, the list goes on. I know for me, I didn’t actually care about doing well in school until I realized at 18 that I wasn’t going to graduate if I didn’t get my act together. Unfortunately, many kids don’t find intrinsic value in school.

Breaktime my rewards