How to Stretch that Motivation Muscle
As an expert in student motivation, Sonaleena Hartgrove teaches parents her tricks and tips for how to lower the level of stress and conflict at home, and to inspire kids to take ownership over their learning. In today’s blog, she covers the basics for understanding what makes sustained change and offers three tips for kids in every school environment.
Ways to Motivate At Home
Your child spends 4 hours in a row on the basketball court or in front of their device on the latest release of Minecraft, and you’re left wondering, “Why aren’t they this way about cleaning their room, spending time with us, or dedicating this kind of effort to their schoolwork?”
You are not the only parents in this predicament. And, there is good news! The type of motivation that your child is using to play their video game, sports, or other hobbies, can also be harnessed to encourage and support them in the areas of their lives that aren’t as exciting for them.
There are two main camps of motivation: extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsically motivated children are motivated by external rewards. Intrinsically motivated children are motivated by the joy of growing in skills and fulfilled by accomplishing goals. They are harnessing their intrinsic motivation when they are enamored with that video game, sport, or hobby when no encouragement from you is required to help them to grow in those skills. Here are three ways that you can encourage them to be intrinsically motivated about their schoolwork.
Provide them with encouraging verbal language.
Students often act out what they believe about themselves. Using positive language consistently that encourages and empowers them can make a difference in helping them shift their behaviors to successful ones in areas of struggle. When they consistently hear what they are doing well, that they can find a way to do other things well, and see that your behaviors affirm that, then they can begin to believe that they will be successful in their areas of struggle and will begin to make positive choices in those areas.
Let them take ownership of their own learning.
Learning becomes meaningful to students when they take ownership of their learning. Taking ownership of assignments and tasks especially when they are struggling helps them create persistence, which in turn increases motivation. One way that you can support this is to help them troubleshoot problems that come up instead of showing them how to solve a problem. Helping them troubleshoot problems can look like asking them a series of questions that leads them to an answer such as, “What don’t you know? What is another way that you might…? What else could you do to make sure that you are successful?”
Help them break down large tasks into smaller ones until they are completed.
Complex tasks can be overwhelming for any student. One way to help your children be successful at accomplishing larger tasks is to help them break the tasks down into smaller tasks. They will be less overwhelmed about completing the smaller tasks one at a time and increase their confidence with each completed small task. If any of the smaller tasks also seem to overwhelm them, then help them break them down into even “smaller tasks” until it is completed. Then move on to the next small task.
To learn more, please visit Motivate Your Children!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Sonaleena Patnaik Hargrove
“Dr. Sonaleena” has helped several school districts, charter schools, non-profit education organizations, and communities of parents achieve their goals of helping students succeed. She has taught students of diverse linguistic, academic, and developmental backgrounds. She completed her B.S. in Education, M.S. in Educational Psychology and Instructional Technology, and Doctorate in Educational Leadership at the University of Southern California. Her recent accomplishments include systems change in various K-12 schools, empowering parents to support student achievement at home, developing data-informed strategy plans to drive student achievement, navigating effective school budget and resource use practices, collaborating with school leaders and teachers to address challenges that improve student learning outcomes, and coaching teachers for multiple innovative and core instructional programs.
To build on the concept of intrinsic motivation within each student’s educational journey, PacPrep is in the unique position of fully customizing their learning. Many students come to us after a lengthy struggle in a traditional classroom, whether that is due to specific learning challenges or various health conditions. As Dr. Hargrove mentioned, taking ownership over their learning is a critical piece of motivation, and what better way to facilitate that than to build a curriculum they feel uniquely connected to.
Here’s an example of a 10th grade English/Language Arts syllabus for a student with some unique health challenges and an interest in the fashion industry.
For the spring semester of 10th-grade ELA, we will have an extended unit on ability, as well as a shorter unit on pursuing a professional career in the fashion industry. During the first unit, Jane will also complete an essay (~3 pages) on Animal Farm from the last unit. The ability unit will focus on three novels that include characters with various physical and mental disabilities as the protagonists. There will be several shorter writing assignments for this unit, as well as a paper synthesizing the three texts (~3 pages). The final unit is tailored to Jane's interests in fashion and is intended to inspire her to start thinking about a future potential career after high school, possibly by taking on relevant endeavors before graduating high school.
A second grade PacPrep student’s English/Language Arts syllabus looked like this:
This semester Ava will be working on self expression, the mechanics of writing, the function of words, and phonogram spelling. Because she has a strong love of art, arts and crafts will be incorporated into class lessons to help her with mental imagery. Each class will begin with a drawing activity and a review of the previous class material.
Because Ava loves unicorns, the Magic Treehouse book Blizzard of the Blue Moon, a story about a magical unicorn, will be read in this unit. She will be sent her own beautiful copy of the book and also an art book that highlights how to draw unicorns. She will have the opportunity to write her own creative story about a unicorn. She will use mind mapping techniques to create a visual outline for the story including character development, setting and plot. She will also be sent art materials to make her own unicorn headband as well as other unicorn themed arts and crafts activities.
The key is to help children connect their level of effort to the benefits that follow, both in pursuits they choose and for tasks that require a stretch in that motivation muscle.