As a teacher, one of your top priorities is to be able to motivate your students. It’s the key to drive them to reach their potential and achieve their future dreams and goals! Student motivation is a necessity so that learning becomes a continuing, improving, interesting and hopefully enjoyable process.

We all know that from a very early age, children have an unbounded curiosity and love to explore. Teachers must build and stimulate that curiosity using a variety of teaching methods and techniques to continually motivate their students.

There are so many ways for you to motivate your students but here are 7 methods or tactics that I have found very effective.

1. Establish a strong teacher-student relationship by showing your students that you care about them and are interested in what they do and accomplish. Respect them and hopefully they will respect you. Develop an atmosphere of trust in a positive learning environment.

2. Allow your students to make as many of their own decisions and have control over what they do and the way they do it as possible. We all like to have a say, make our own decisions and have control of our own lives, so treat your students in this manner as well. (Obviously, you still have the final say). Believe me, this is a great motivational technique.

3. People in general and young students in particular need to feel that whatever they’re learning has a useful application in life. So, keep your students motivated by trying to associate anything you teach, class projects, assignments, etc. to a real life situation. The advancement of computer technology,the Internet and applications such as Powerpoint should provide many opportunities to keep your students motivated, involved and attentive.

4. Implement a reward system. Teaching strategies that offer praise and involve a reward system have proved to be extremely beneficial in motivating students. Teaching in primary grades is quite different than in junior grades and the reward system and prizes will differ. For example, points can be awarded for achieving different tasks and awards such as free time, parties, or other simple prizes (from the dollar store) are great motivational tools. Just make sure that your students realize that the reward system is a reward for finishing a task not for just participating!

5. Classroom team building activities such as classroom games play an important role as student motivational tools. Other team building activities such as classroom meetings to discuss things such as hobbies, vacation plans, class parties and trips, are great for developing friendships between students and building students’ self-esteem. These activities will also draw in your unmotivated students as well.

6. Another WIN-WIN for both teacher and students, is allowing them to help you out with many of the classroom jobs. Young and older students love to help the teacher and offering this as a reward, motivates them to try harder and do better with their work. It’s a bonus for you too, since there’s less for you to do.

7. Classroom displays help to make your classroom a stimulating and motivating environment in which to learn! Displaying their work for others to see, motivates students to learn, work and provide good quality results. Remember too, that it is important that students play a important part in decorating the classroom. When students feel ownership of their classroom, it motivates them and creates a positive learning environment.

Let me end this article by telling you of two things you should always remember. First, in order to build student motivation you should always put a positive spin on things. Second, always encourage your students and never give up on them. It’s amazing how that makes you feel as well!