Knowledge

I see motivation and engaging students as a very important part of classroom management. If students are not engaged in their learning or motivated to learn, they probably will not learn. To have students engaged in the instruction means they are interested in what they are learning, and therefore will retain more information since they are paying more attention. If students are motivated in the classroom, they are not only interested in their instruction but also excited to participate! Once students are in depth with a lesson and have been efficiently engaged and motivated, they will be on task and willing to stay on task throughout instruction as that is what they are focused on!

Vygotsky and his research regarding the zone of proximal development are one of my favorite aspects of teaching. He greatly influences my thoughts and strategies for motivating students and encourages me to create a positive learning environment because he emphasizes student’s abilities with and without outside support. I want to create a democratic classroom where students are given a variety of responsibilities to help them gain independence and the confidence to complete tasks by themselves. This gradual release of responsibility, which can be exemplified in the “ask 3 before me” rule in our code of conduct, allows students to receive the scaffolding they need depending on their developmental level. This motivates students and engages them in instruction as a lot of their requirements are dependent on them. The students are given this responsibility and are motivated to prove to their teacher as well as their peers that they are capable of completing things by themselves. As the teacher I will always offer support, but depending on their level of need, I want to challenge students and have them try to complete assignments in their appropriate zone of development.

Gardner and his theory of Multiple Intelligences is definitely something I want to keep in mind in my future classroom and something I think would motivate and engage students in any part of instruction in the classroom. By providing different activities in the classroom or providing various aspects of instruction that tap into different intelligences, it can really engage and motivate students as every individual student is interested in different activities. By allowing the students to try out different activities that touch on the different intelligences, it gives each student a chance to use their different intelligences throughout the lesson and helps engage them as well. For example, one student may enjoy and do well with activities that involve the musical multiple intelligence while another does better with activities that involve the bodily-kinesthetic multiple intelligence. By including different options for students to tap into their intelligences, it engages them in what they are doing since they would enjoy it. This also motivates students since they get excited to participate in fun activities in the classroom.

Connection

Strategies

According to Kauchak and Eggen (2004), motivation is defined as the process that initiates, guides, and maintains goal-oriented behaviors. It is essentially what causes us to act and it involves biological, emotional, social, and cognitive forces (Psychology, 2019). A specific motivational strategy I want to include in my classroom is positive competition. For example, in my fifth grade classroom, we had a book reading contest throughout the entire grade. Each class would read an amount of books each week and at the end of the week, we would weigh the books that we had read. There was a scale in the hallway where we each put our stack of books and recorded the weight. We cheered for each other and really had fun with it! At the end of the year, the class who had the most weight from their books would earn a pizza party. This friendly competition not only encouraged us to read, but had us encouraging our friends to read as well so our class could get the pizza party. I want to include fun and rewarding competitions within my classroom that also promote learning and has the children excited and motivated to learn, or in this case, read! This strategy promotes a collective and collaborative learning environment where students work together to achieve a common goal as Kauchak and Eggen mention. This fits into my philosophy for classroom management because it gives students the freedom to choose what they want to read throughout the competition which is an aspect of a democratic classroom. Another strategy I want to include in my classroom focuses on intrinsic motivation which is when the student is involved in a task because they are motivated by the activity itself and not the goal that is achieved at the end. This could happen when a student is motivated to learn because they are really interested in the topic they are learning about. I want to incorporate a topic explored by Jacob Kounin referred to as student accountability. This aligns with my philosophy because it gives the student the responsibility and accountability to be engaged in the classroom and interested in the lesson. A motivational strategy I want to utilize in my classroom is letting students choose what they learn about. For example, the students could be completing a project having to do with the ocean. I would give the students the freedom and responsibility of choosing their own topic to study, it just has to do with the ocean. This way, the students are motivated to complete their work as they picked out the research topic they were interested in.