Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Motivation 2

Praise can become detrimental to students because if we praise kids to much, then they may be unable to process information or learn new things without being motivated by the teacher. Kids may think that if they aren't being praised that they aren't doing a good job, thus causing them to feel as if they're failures. This in turn can make the child feel as if they aren't good enough and can cause their motivation to plummet.

If a child is only interested in proving their intelligence to others it can be harmful to themselves as well as their peers they are bragging to. The student flaunting his knowledge may feel so smart and may just continue bragging, and when someone challenges them or they fail to attain the correct information, then it may bring them down and they may feel as if they are no longer excellent or excelling at knowing their information. The students they are bragging to may feel inferior to them because that student keeps flaunting knowlede to everyone. Which in turn may cause students to become less motivated and less wanting of more knowledge.

We should praise children when we see them struggling and when we belive they need it most. When a student is lacking in motivation it is our job as the teacher to sit back and motivate them and tell them we think what they're doing is excellent and shows clear thinking. We should not just tell the student "good job", it needs to mean more. Complimenting them on their efforts to spell correctly, to color between the lines, to draw a great family tree, etc are all ways to encourage a student to do  better as well as praise them for what they have already done.

1 comment:

  1. These are good ways to praise students based on the article. It's also important to consider praising students based on their efforts and not their intelligence. If students are praised for working hard on a challenging behavior instead of being told they're smart they will realize that they can control their behaviors opposed to their intelligence being an innate quality they can't control.

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