If our students are eager to learn they will participate effectively. Moreover, finding ways and applying effective teaching strategies can help me answer “How can I motivate my students to study?”
Student motivation is one of the challenging tasks teachers face. It’s crucial in creating meaningful learning experiences for the students. Moreover, our students need to be motivated properly and be inspired to develop study habits.
Human motivation is a common experience. It’s a basic need of our students that must be met. It’s our meaningful way of getting connected with our students. Hence, let’s make a difference and help our students magnify their strengths and hone their study skills.
Photo by Kuanish Reymbaev on Unsplash
Importance of Student Motivation
Why is student motivation important?
Motivation is essential to stay active, participative, and interested in learning. This rings true for all students. Our students can’t achieve much without it. If our students are not motivated effectively, they don’t have a strong interest to study and work harder.
Our students have to study their lessons in order to catch up with their learning tasks and to learn concepts effectively. They can achieve much if they develop study habits. But not all prescribed study techniques work well for all students. It differs ultimately.
It depends on the student’s routines and behavior. What works well in one may not be with the others. Hence, as teachers, we just have to give our students amazing tips on how to best learn a concept and study their lessons.
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<<Find ways to boost your students’ self-esteem. Motivate them to feel better about themselves and improve their self-confidence.
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More likely, our students, especially those who are experiencing difficulty in the classroom, need techniques to improve their study habits. This comes after they are motivated to learn effectively. That is why student motivation is very important.
How Can I Motivate My Students To Study? 5 Inspiring Ways Every Teacher Must Realize
Although studying, learning, and being motivated should be a natural instinct of a person, teachers can still make a difference in developing these inner drives in being educated.
Don’t worry. We got you covered. Just realize the following inspiring ways and motivate your students to develop effective study skills in order to become successful. Through these ways, your students may likewise realize that poor study habits or no study habits at all will lead to frustration and eventually affect their individual performances.
1. Encourage your students to create a study space at home
To this end, you have to involve the parents. The parents must be aware that it’s one of the best things they can do for their children. When students have a quiet study space at home, they are more encouraged to study their lessons. They can study effectively. If they feel comfortable, more likely, they love to scan their notes, read a book, answer their homework, and make their outputs.
Likewise, in the classroom, the learning environment per se is the study room I can offer. For me, since the classroom is viewed as an immediate learning space for our students, it should instill engagement and motivation.
2. Always check and follow up on students’ assignments and tasks
It’s always desirable to follow up on students’ assigned tasks and set deadlines. This is helping students to become responsible and to develop time management. Giving homework is good but if you are not doing a follow-up the next day, it’s useless and will encourage a passive act from students.
If students are aware of your rules in checking assignments and tasks, they will be more inclined to prepare and study their lessons. But if you are not making a follow-up on your students’ assignments, and just go on with a new day in the classroom, most likely, students will not be motivated to prepare their assignments.
For me, students should prepare their homework to further develop responsibility and to help children to learn better. It should be a positive experience for all. Being used as positive reinforcement, homework is a way of making students study.
As the students apply and incorporate what they learn or study in advance to prepare for the next lesson, they will improve their class standing or performance.
On my end, when I give homework to my students as reinforcement, I should stipulate a letter in the student’s communication notebook requesting them to assist their children. Hence, they have to affix their signature on the child’s work.
Moreover, this will strengthen the bond between me and my student’s parents. Then, corrective checking and evaluation must follow the next day.
3. Always provide immediate feedback on the student’s performance
Why should teachers give immediate feedback on how students perform? Ultimately, constant feedback will lead to student engagement and will strengthen his/her inner drive to do more. Thus, a student studies.
Our responses to students’ behavior and academic performance play a very important role in motivating the students to improve their performances. Feedback may be given verbally or in writing. It should not in any way undermine the students’ self-confidence.
Giving constructive feedback to our students will encourage them to study and perform more. This is giving due recognition to students’ hard work. Hence, this strategy also works best in making students prepare and study.
Even though our students don’t perform at par excellence, we should recognize their efforts and share inspiring thoughts. This should be done especially for the graders. This will give them a positive learning experience.
4. Teach your students how to be organized
Since student engagement is very essential, as teachers, we should help them get motivated in order to be at their best. The more motivated our students are, the more they are inspired to study. Also, is there a way to establish this? Students must be organized.
They should be taught how to make a schedule especially when they are at home. Time management is of the essence too. When students are caught with the question, “where my homework is?”. Certainly, there’s a problem with them being so disorganized.
Hence, they should be taught how to make use of a checklist starting from their school materials to their tasks per learning area. Moreover, by listing down all the tasks with increasing importance, they know what to do first and so on.
For this, they will not miss a thing and they will earn wonderful things such as improved grades and performance. They don’t cram because they are so organized, hence, they are more encouraged to study.
5. Help your students develop a good mindset regarding schoolwork
Our students look up to us as their adult inspiration in the classroom. The way we manage the class will either help us gain or break their confidence in us. But I’m sure if you are a great teacher your influence on your students is immense. Hence, let’s touch on that.
Developing a good mindset regarding schoolwork is a way of telling our students to study in a positive and constructive way. It can sound less daunting on their part and it sounds more of a responsibility than an obligation.
That thing is called a growth mindset and it should be embedded in our motivation techniques to influence good behavior and positive thinking in our students. This will not happen in a day. Its development concerns a process.
With our mission of giving our children high-quality education, we should help them achieve their fullest potential by showing them the importance of doing schoolwork. As we develop in our students a growth mindset regarding the execution and completion of schoolwork, they will realize that this can all be done with persistence and consistency of effort.
6. Assign a study buddy
This works best in my classroom too. Just like having a think-pair-share strategy, my students believe in their capacities to socially interact with their classmates. Doing this will make students feel they are not alone after all.
Moreover, by having a study buddy, peer tutoring works wonders. As struggling students get paired with the exceptional ones without a hint of discrimination, of course, they feel more inspired to do their best and shine.
Pairing and grouping students appropriately, they will explore their ideas and share thoughts as they create products. Thus, the value of collaborative learning is also emphasized.
Besides, those students who experience difficulties in the learning activities will set their study buddies as their examples, hence they get motivated and learn about hard work. I even heard somebody say, “This is something I’ll be good at too!”.
Conclusion
To study is to learn. Hence, our students should be helped in order to develop good study habits. I see it as a collaborative task for parents and teachers.
Moreover, we should be aware that what works well for one student may not be for the others. The tips shared in this article are somewhat general and could best apply to all students. We know that everyone is different.
When students develop effective study skills, they will improve their learning and understanding of the lessons. Studying should make the most of the time but should be viewed as a tedious task. It should be an enjoyable one as our students wish.
What’s your magic formula for helping and encouraging your students to study? To that end, feel free to comment below.
