Chapter 10 page 205
ENHANCING MOTIVATIONA Quiz
In this part of the chapter, you will learn about a range of teaching techniques for improving your
students’ motivation. Before you begin reading about these techniques, please try your hand at answering
the questions below to see how well your current beliefs about motivation accord with the findings of
motivational researchers.
For each question, predict whether the activity is more likely to increase or decrease students’
academic motivation to learn in school, or whether it will have no effect on students’ academic motivation
(I = increase, D = decrease, N=no effect). After you finish, check your answers on the following page.
1. Introduce a math lesson with a comment such as “I think you’ll find today’s lesson really
interesting, and it’ll give you ideas for showing your parents how to make some home
improvements.”
2. After a three-week unit on the Civil War, give middle school history students the project of
writing a Civil War drama that illustrates as much about the Civil War as they know.
3. Give a class that has been getting near-perfect grades on quizzes a somewhat more
difficult quiz.
4. Allow high school English students to choose any book they like for a book report.
5. Let your math students take turns to lead a math lesson.
6. Use a program such as Pizza Hut’s “Book-It” to promote reading in your school. (The
Book-It program provides monthly free pizzas to elementary-school students as they
achieve goals they set for the number of books they read each month. Then, at the end of
the year, all the students who have met their goals each month get to have a pizza party.)
7. Encourage your high school students’ parents to reward students with money if they get a
3.5 average or better.
8. Announce honor role students over the P.A.
9. Have your top math students lead a math lesson as a reward for their good achievement.
10. When grouping students, group according to students’ ability so that good students don’t
get dragged down and poor students don’t feel that they are being put down.
11. Use group work sparingly.
12. Allow writing students a chance to turn in a revised essay paper in after getting your
written comments.
13. Evaluate students on improvement as well as on absolute performance.
14. Grade on a curve, but a curve that isn’t strict, so that 50% of students get As.
15. Hold students to a tight time limit when giving tests and quizzes.
16. Provide many and varied club activities after school.
17. Ask students to write down their learning goals for the week on Monday.
18. Prior to a discussion, have a student who has been disruptive tell you how many times he
will make relevant contributions during the discussion.
19. Teach students how to memorize dates for the AP history exam.
20. Teach students to self-explain math problems as they are studying their math book.