As my own schooling from elementary school to high school is traditional test-oriented style. My teachers and parents viewed GRADES more important than learning progress. Twenty years later, I become a teacher. As a teacher, I witnessed my students struggled about their grades and even were blamed by the social worker that “How come you get this grade? You wasted your own time, my time, and teacher’s time!” As a teacher, I don’t think so. I clearly knew that the girl did not fool around, but she tried to learn. It is just because she did not pass the exam doesn’t NOT mean that she did not make any effort.
#1 Let them pick!
Daniel Pink, motivation expert, suggests autonomy as a way to get kids motivated outside of the grade. “We’re not talking about a wild and wooly free-for-all where everyone does whatever they want whenever they want to do it,” he says. But you can give them choice over:
- What they study
- Which projects they do
- What they read
- How they do their work
#2 Teach the difference between learning and performing.
Kids should know the difference, and know which really matters.
- A learning goal might be: “We will be readers who can make predictions about the text.”
- A performance goal would be “I’m going to get an A in reading class.”