Title: Strategies for Helping Students Motivate Themselves | Edutopia
Headings: Strategies for Helping Students Motivate Themselves
Strategies for Helping Students Motivate Themselves
By Larry Ferlazzo
Autonomy
Competence
Relatedness
Relevance

Content: One of my students had never written an essay in his school career. He was intent on maintaining that record during an assignment to write a persuasive essay about what students thought was the worst natural disaster. Because I knew two of his passions were football and video games, I told him that as long as he used the writing techniques we’d studied, he could write an essay on why his favorite football team was better than its rival or on why he particularly liked one video game. He ended up writing an essay on both topics. 4. Don’t give up on students: Be positive (as much as humanly possible) and encourage a growth mindset. Relevance
Have students write about how they see what they are learning as relevant to their lives. Researchers had students write one paragraph after a lesson sharing how they thought what they had learned would be useful to their lives. Writing one to eight of these during a semester led to positive learning gains, especially for those students who had previously been “low performers.”