A Teacher's Companion to Essential Motivation in the Classroom

Resources and activities to inspire and engage your students

Georgia Holleran, Ian Gilbert

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317750796
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Teachers around the world have found Ian Gilbert's classic text Essential Motivation in the Classroom an inspiring and provocative read. This ground-breaking companion to the book is a definitive one-stop guide for teachers who are looking for inspiration into how his ideas can be put into practice in every-day classrooms. A truly lively and engaging resource, it scrutinises each aspect of Gilbert's now famous 'seven keys' of motivation and provides a wide range of practical ideas, activities and launch-pads for discussion which can be blended seamlessly into your own lessons.
Taking as its starting point the right of every child to an inspirational education that develops their values, attitudes and skills, this book provides you with the means to unlock even your most challenging of pupils and will act as a spring board for visionary learning in the classroom and beyond,

Key ideas explored include:
• Goal setting strategies
• Students' own intrinsic motivation
• Preparing effective challenges
• Developing multiple approaches to learning
• Using physical activities to anchor learning
• Helping students to understand themselves better and be better prepared for the world today
For teachers of pupils at all ages and stages, this book is easy to follow, easy to 'dip in and out of', is conversational in tone, and has the potential to be a game-changer for any teacher wishing reinvigorate their pupils, colleagues and classrooms.

CHAPTER 1

Motivated for what?

What we’ll cover in this chapter:

Making the subject relevant and interesting

Goal-setting strategies

Preparing for the future

Embracing failure

Bad news, I’m afraid. The culmination of six million years’ worth of neurological evolution is not the GCSE.

Ian Gilbert, Essential Motivation in the Classroom

It’s a lovely acronym: WIIFM – or ‘What’s In It For Me?’. We forget that, as adults, we calculate WIIFM all the time: those extra responsibility points may mean more work but that comes with more pay or, at least, experience in a new field. Undertaking a gruelling fundraising task for charity can be demanding and arduous but lead to an amazing sense of achievement and, of course, funds for the charity. Even deciding what goes in the supermarket trolley is a process of weighing up the gains: hmmm, healthy fruit and veg or a variety of salty snacks to accompany late night TV viewing…? But our students don’t have any choice in the matter of being in school all day. Don’t show up at school and your parents could go to jail is certainly a WIIFM (if only for the parents!). When they are small, our kids go to school because we tell them that’s what all kids do and then they realise they get to be with their friends all day. Then, some years later, they hopefully come out with an assortment of qualifications. Well, that was my experience anyway.

It was that feeling of wasting my time at school that got me into teaching in the first place. I felt school could be a lot more useful, particularly for the ‘dutiful turn-ups’ like me who had no real issue with going in every day but felt like they were just biding their time. When I entered the teaching profession, I wanted to offer students more than that. To me, school should be a place where you are taught the skills to make the most of your amazing life. A place where you learn how to learn. A place where you can build understanding of what you have to offer the world. So, as teachers in the twenty-first century, can we do it? Can we engage the young minds in front of us and ensure their crucial developmental years are fully utilised? That can seem like a tall order when you see them for an hour a week every alternate Thursday. But never fear; inspiring minds is what this chapter is all about.

First, you need to turn into a bit of a marketing guru. Remember what got you into your subject in the first place? If you’re a primary teacher, then that’s probably because you’re fascinated with how young children learn, and for you this section may be a bit more straightforward as many children are often still very much switched on at this age. But if you’re a secondary teacher, you may well have a great love or, at the very least, an interest in your chosen subject. Tap into it. You may teach History and only have classes for six weeks at a time on a carousel system, but boy can you make an impact in those six weeks! An impact that could last a lifetime. It is time for you to start infecting others with your enthusiasm.

Pick something you fancy from the list below to start to get a buzz going about your subject both in your classroom and all around school. Remember, what you’re trying to do is demonstrate the benefits of what your subject offers.

Find and use great quotes about your subject. Check out this one by Freeman Dyson (no, not that Dyson, this one’s a really cool physicist and mathematician): ‘A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible.’

Who are the famous people, now and in history, connected to your field?

What AMAZING things have happened in the world because of your subject?

Does your subject lead to / support a wide range of jobs? What are the many exciting jobs and careers related to your subject?

Do you know the various career paths, training and university courses available connected with your subject?

Reflect on why you find the subject so fascinating. Are you brave enough to be interviewed by your students?

If you’re that way inclined, you could design yourself a marketing campaign aimed at students, teachers and parents. How about a stand at parents’ evening…?

What are the ten most fascinating and little-known facts about your subject?

What’s your passion point? Could you make a short presentation or film for assembly?

Is there any fictional or autobiographical work relating to your subject that you could read aloud that might reveal a different aspect of it? For example, through reading Henry Williamson, I developed an understanding of the realities of the First World War and, of all things, agricultural practices in the 1940s.

Have you thought of Googling cartoons and illustrations about your subject? Stick ’em up on the walls and in the corridors to inform and entertain queuers, loiterers and visitors.

Find out the practical, emotional and intellectual issues people have about your subject. How can they be dealt with?

Are there any false ideas, myths or rumours students hold about your subject that you can prove otherwise?

Activities you can do with your class:

Make marketing style posters about how brilliant the subject is. Have them around the walls or have a featured poster of the week. Sneak them into other areas of the school.

Find out what your students like about your subject and why. Promote this.

Challenge another class scheduled at the same time but studying another subject to a debate about which subject is more useful/relevant/interesting/fun etc.

Are you brave enough to go head-to-head with another teacher and debate why knowledge of your subject would be more useful for future life? To be performed with panache and humour, no nasty jibes; we’re not running for th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1: Motivated for what?
• 2: Go with the flow
• 3: Mission control
• 4: Get real
• 5: Get personal
• 6: Reptiles in the classroom
• 7: Motivation is a four-letter word
• Where to start
• 25 instant wins
• Using the worksheets
• Posters
• General bibliography
• Index