Why should they care?

A model for motivation  Expectancy  Your expectation about your ability to accomplish the task  Am I capable and prepared to do this?  Value  Your perception of the degree to which the task is worthwhile for you  Is this worth my time and effort to achieve?  What will I get out of this?

Increasing Expectancy  Balance of challenge and support  Not too easy, not too hard  Teach the process  Modeling  Teach the steps  Time & Materials  Provide adequate time  Make sure students have access to necessary materials

Increasing Expectancy  Support  Express sincere confidence in students’ abilities  Give specific, sincere praise  Truly care – and communicate that you care  Be available to answer questions  Provide timely feedback  Smaller, more frequent assessments are more motivating than a few that are high stakes

Increasing Value  Show relevance  How does this connect to your life?  Allow for choices  Provide opportunities for collaboration  I don’t have to do this alone  My work matters to other people  Use extrinsic rewards judiciously  Extrinsic motivation tends to be short-lived  Can motivate in the short-term to create success that can result in intrinsic motivation

If you want students to be motivated...  Build relationships with and among your students  Provide a balance of challenge and support  Provide plentiful opportunities for success  Success breeds success!  Teach well  Make the content relevant  Find out what matters to your students

Keep in mind...  Students are driven by two competing feelings: striving for success vs. fear of failure  “Over time, students become either success oriented or failure avoidant. When students become failure avoidant, motivation is difficult. In fact, students may choose to fail with dignity to protect their ego.”  In other words, your students have already created a school-identity for themselves before they enter your classroom. For most kids, it’s not that they don’t care – it’s that they don’t want to fail.

Emotions, the Amygdala and the Teenage Brain  Any information received by the brain travels first to the amygdala  The amygdala holds emotional memory - it tells you how you feel about things  In the teenage brain, the amygdala is developing faster than the frontal lobes  So, teenagers tend to be reactive not reflective

Therefore...  If there is an assault to their sense of self or  another pressing concern of an emotional nature The teenage brain become unavailable!  Your job is to capture their interest and their hearts.  ENGAGEMENT – helping them care, capturing interest  Engagement Attention Learning

So what do worksheets have to do with it? Worksheets themselves are neutral – neither inherently motivating or inherently de- motivating They can be worthwhile learning tools – or not. Students can perceive them as doable -- or not. The key is to INCREASE their VALUE.

Increasing Value  Figure out where the worksheet fits in the learning process.

Possible roles of worksheets  Skill building  Practice  Review  Performance A common problem is treating a worksheet as the goal – instead of a stepping stone.

Jazzing up worksheets  Play music while students work  Play games with worksheets –  Use the exercises as questions in a game  Share the worksheet – each student does one problem and passes it on  Teacher gives the answers (but some are wrong – students have to find them)  Do worksheets in pairs  Let students choose from a selection of WS  Make WS part of a roleplay or simulation  Contextualize the WS

Other Ideas  Establish the role and purpose of the WS – tie it to a meaningful, proficiency-based goal  Use worksheets as pre- and post- tests; if students show competency, they don’t have to do the WS  Move beyond the WS and let the students know when you’re doing it – see if students can perform in a different context  Alternate between grading and completion

Discuss  What role do worksheets play in your classroom?  How motivated do students seem to be to do worksheets? Why?  What value does your mentor perceive in worksheets?  What value do you perceive in worksheets?  What value do your students perceive in worksheets?

Look at the sample WS  What are some roles it could play?  How could you increase the value?  How could you increase student expectancy for success?  How could you “jazz it up”?