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Encouraging your students to learn and enjoy education is one of the most important roles as a teacher, although it can also be one of the hardest. Here we take a look at the top 8 ways to motivate your students to help them achieve the most from your time in class with them.

1. Positive Competition

Creating healthy competition in a lesson is a great way to motivate your students and can encourage them to try harder. Have fun and use humour to invoke a healthy competitive spirit in the classroom, this could be by giving points or setting a small incentive so there is something to compete against each other for.

2. Create Varied Lesson Plans

It can be hard to show enthusiasm in a lesson if students are only ever doing the same thing as it becomes boring and predictable. To help improve motivation create varied lesson plans which will give your students something they can look forward to and get excited about. Trying new things is always a good way to peek someone’s interests, rather than repeating the same lesson plans mix it up and if you find that a new method works well you will be able to use this again, if not at least you will know for next time.

3. Offer Rewards

Rewards can be given to your students to provide a sense of achievement and help them work harder in class. This could be something as simple as a star sticker system, where so many stickers add up to a prize, pupil of the day award, or other incentives such as a chocolate bar or new pen.

4. Set Goals

Setting your students an attainable goal to reach will give them something to work towards which can be a good way to get them to work harder. Goals should be a challenge but should also be possible to reach so that it doesn’t deter the students by making them think it is too hard for them to achieve.

5. Be Enthusiastic

It is important to be enthusiastic about your lessons, after all if you don’t get excited about lessons then how can you expect your students to as well? Showing you are eager and ready to start the lesson with positive energy will give your whole class a boost and help them have more focus and motivation.

6. Know Your Students

Take the time to get to know all of your students, not just their names but their characters, strengths and weaknesses. This will help you plan lessons that cater for all your students as well as helping you create a better relationship with your class. Students are more likely to respect you and try hard in your lessons if they know you are genuinely interested in them as individuals.

7. Teamwork

Having students work in teams will help encourage a sense of camaraderie and competitive spirit which can increase motivation. Your class will be full of students that learn in different ways, pupils that learn better working in a group environment will have the chance to excel where they wouldn’t in a one on one class situation.

8. Mix Fun into the Lesson

Try to plan 15-20 minute periods of learning mixed up with fun activities, this way students with a short attention span won’t get distracted and disturb the rest of the class. It will also help students to enjoy lessons more, rather than being sat at their desks the whole time. They will have more motivation to get involved if they are enjoying a range of different activities.

Now you have our top 8 ways to motivate your students try each of them out in class and see which ones work best for you.

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