Chapter 2: Motivating Young Adolescents

The main point of the chapter was to discuss ways to motivate middle school students. Each section of the chapter is broken down to cover different ideas or suggestions and the reasons why that would work. The first two ideas I think are the most important. Knowing your students and using their interests to make the lessons more interesting and creating an emotionally safe environment in which students feel safe to share their ideas and opinions. Some other examples are use stories, create vivid lessons, have enthusiasm for the subject, state the objectives clearly, and meet every student’s learning needs. Adolescents are interested in themselves and the world and are bored easily. If the lessons are vivid, the teacher is interested, and the students understand what is expected of them it will go a long way to keep the students attention.

Motivating students has always been a challenge in schools. I did my practicum in the high school at Mt Blue in a freshman geography class. The book said that middle school students like to move around and can’t sit still. In the high school the students are lethargic to put it nicely. Asking them to move to group up was like asking them to run a marathon. Learning from the chapter that middle school students like doing activities is interesting.