5 ways to reinvigorate your early ed students
Tips for keeping young students motivated through the last of the winter months
As we enter the second half of the school year, it can seem like the days aren’t getting longer fast enough. During this time, students may become more disengaged, emotional, and distracted than normal. For a teacher, the creative juices it takes to find new ways to motivate and engage students can feel like they’re drying up. Rather than searching for motivation at the bottom of your morning coffee, check out our 5 ways to reinvigorate your students.
1. Incorporate technology. Kids get so excited any time they get to use tech in class. So even if you’re a true blue pen-and-paper kind of teacher, incorporating technology for some activities can give your students that burst of motivation you’re searching for. There are a ton of great educational apps floating around and just as many resources to help you pick the right ones. If you’re teaching sight words this year, Sights is a super effective and fun way to practice sight words with your students while tracking their progress. Young students love hearing the chimes when they correctly identify words, and seeing the floating heart animation each time they pass a level motivated them to learn the next level’s words.
2. Work in some extra one-on-one time. Whether they’re too shy to ask questions in class or they just want a little extra attention from you, offering a few minutes of extra one-on-one time can go a long way for improving your relationships with your students. Especially for “trouble” students or those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, teacher-student relationships can determine classroom engagement (Fredricks 2014). You can put together the pieces they need to fully understand a lesson from earlier that day, answer their questions, or just engage them in a meaningful conversation about whatever they want to talk about. Remember, not every conversation has to have a point or lesson involved. Just sitting together and letting them talk can do wonders for your relationship, and a strong relationship can really improve classroom engagement.
3. Have a morning huddle. Set aside five to ten minutes in the morning to gear up for the day with your students. Open up your huddle to story time (either you can read them a new story or they can take turns telling their own stories), do some stretching to get everyone a little looser, or start a daily mindfulness practice to clear everyone’s mind before starting the school day.
4. Pass out some positivity. Realistically, you can’t always expect your students to give it their all every day. Sometimes they’ll be sleepy, disruptive, or uninterested. One of the best ways to inject positivity into the day is movement. It can be as simple as running around the class to give everyone a high five (and letting them take turns doing the same) or playing music in the morning and asking everyone to join you in a silly little dance party. Edutopia suggests hand-clapping or foot stomping patterns to go with a chanted verse or set of math rules.
5. Start a classroom book club. Every month, introduce the class to a new book. Have students practice reading the book in a group, or if your students aren’t able to read yet, read out loud to them. By exposing your students to varied types of stories, students will develop a taste for books and learn which topics interest them.
If you teach at a Title 1 or low-income school, taking extra time to read in class is crucial, as 61% of America’s low-income children grow up in homes without books, according to an IEA Reading Literacy Study. This statistic is in direct correlation with students’ educational success, so anything you can do to invigorate their desire to read is helpful not only for engagement in your class but long term success as well.
There’s a book out there for every student; help them find it.
We all need a pick-me-up now and then. For many students and teachers around the country, it’s more “now” than “then.” Use these 5 ideas as a launch pad to reinvigorate your students and start healthy classroom practices to lower stress.
What are some activities you use to reengage and reinvigorate your elementary students? Tell us in the comments!
- Fredricks, J. A. (2014). Eight Myths of Student Disengagement: Creating Classrooms of Deep Learning. Los Angeles: Corwin.
