Motivation

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Home : 2002 : September : 14

Motivation
By Lou

I'm struggling somewhat with motivating some of my 5th graders this year. It seems as if nothing matters.

This past week, I tried something different. I put students in groups of 4, gave them a task to work on and TEACH
others in the group (I had already given a mini-lesson the previous day). I told them that the following day I would give them a worksheet on this particular skill which they would do individually. I told them I would reward whichever's group total score of right answers was the highest(I took the average since I had one group of 3, not 4), and they would be able to choose as a group

what that reward would be.

I was amazed at how well they worked together, and even more amazed at how well they did individually on the task (80 percent was the lowest score!).

I then tried this with a particular student in my classroom who isn't doing any homework. I told him to think of a reward that he would like for showing responsibility in his homework. We talked about how many days in a row would be reasonable for him to bring homework in before getting his reward, etc. It's only been a couple of days, but he seemed to like the fact that he was choosing, and it wasn't me offering a skip homework or extra recess or whatever. We'll see what happens!