Teachers Keep Students Motivated
Plan Valuable Learning Activities for the End of the School Year
Teachers can help keep students academically on track at the year's end. Planning classroom activities that keep students interested and involved requires creativity.
The end of the school year is challenging for high school teachers on many levels. They need to organize their classrooms, prepare for final exams and plan ahead for next year. Many teachers do not know if they will have the same class preps next year, so determining how to store teaching materials is another concern. Most importantly, however, teachers must devise lesson plans that ensure students continue to learn through the end of the school year.
Vary Classroom Activities
It is easy for teachers to rely on the most efficient information delivery format: the lecture. However, research has proven that the lecture format is also the least effective way to entice students to learn. Students become passive, and many develop a knack for tuning out when their teachers spend the majority of class time talking. Therefore, try to keep students actively engaged in the learning process. Consider arranging your students in mixed ability groups and assign each student a specific duty: a speaker, a writer, and two or three researchers, for example. Offer extra credit to students who volunteer to teach the class one key concept with a brief lesson they have planned.
Put Students in the Driver’s Seat
Students tend to experience a surge of energy near the end of the school year; you can help positively and productively direct this energy. Now is a great time to assign class projects, short research assignments and individual student presentations. Be sure to provide students with a detailed rubric so they understand exactly what is expected of them as well as how they will be graded to keep students motivated. Include in your rubric the requirement of a visual or audio aid that students can share with their peers. Try to foster student creativity and allow them to develop their own variations on a topic or theme so they have a vested interest in their work.
Reinforce Key Concepts and Skills
Often, teachers feel they have too much information to cover at the end of the school year and that they are running out of precious time. Teachers must accept that they will never teach their students everything they want to teach them. You need to pick and choose your topics carefully and consider that depth, not breadth, is more meaningful for students. Give your students the opportunity to review important information they have learned throughout the school year. Remind them, specifically, of how much they have learned by incorporating exam reviews into your lesson plans.
Prepare for Final Exams
Provide students with flashcards, overhead transparencies and detailed study guides and allow students to work in groups to quiz each other. In order to keep students on task, circulate through the groups and assign students a participation grade for that activity. At the end of the exam review session, which may last one to three class periods, allow students in each group to conduct a whole class review by quizzing the entire group.
By keeping students focused and involved in the learning process, teachers can help keep students motivated to end of the school year!
