Their school is better then ours :/

As we were researching information about motivation, we found an article about Finland and their educational philosophies. This article was published in  Business Insider. There are 26 points that this talks about and many of them seem to reflect the values and ideas of what Pink is speaking to in his book. These students are not worried about test-taking or grades, they focus more on learning and gaining knowledge. We believe that we need to spend more time focusing on education from a Finnish viewpoint. It will give students the opportunity to work on what is most interesting to them and they can become the very best in the area from early on.

Here are the 26 facts:
http://www.businessinsider.com/finland-education-school-2011-12?op=1

Motivate Students: Ain't Nobody Got Time For That!

Sometimes we as teachers forget about motivating students at all times during the day. It's a difficult job and it is easy to get into the same routine of lecturing and worksheet. We need to remember that even though it may be time consuming, it is important to motivate students. We want to look at how we can motive students while we are teaching. Not by just giving praise or stickers, but by using their needs and interests as a way to keep them interested in the lesson. Everyone wants to feel special and to feel like they are helping others, so including this in your classroom can be a great way to get students to become masters at the content you are teaching.












 
Some ways to motive students intrinsically:

• Have student helpers
• Allow students to make connections with each other
• Let students teach each other
• Get students to be excited for each other  
• Make what you are teaching relevant to their lives 
• Not just because they need it on a test!!!
• Encourage questions
• Do this by creating an inviting and safe classroom atmosphere. 
• Use the student's interests in your lessons
• Ask open-ended/non-threatening questions
• Create time for tangent projects
• If students become really interested and engaged in a math problem, let them keep working and talking about the problem. The learning that takes place during that discussion will be more valuable to them. 
• ‘Popcorn’ learning. 
• This is where the teacher divides the students into groups of 4 or 5 and gives them a topic or person to study. Each of the students then takes a sub-topic and researches it, then presents what they have found to their classmates in a way of their choosing.
• This way the students feel responsible for their information and want to help their fellow classmates learn the material

LET'S BE CREATIVE! :)

In the classroom, many teachers believe that the only way students will learn is if the students are given some sort of incentive, but why can’t we teach our students to love learning for the sake of learning? I believe that we can. Many students, especially elementary students, are at school because that is what their parents tell them to do. They may not want to learn, or be in the classroom; but we as teachers need to make them enjoy the work they are doing. Pink suggests that people like to do work that doesn’t seem like work. I believe that is what we need to make our classroom seem like. We need to make learning fun, exciting, and engaging. Papers aren’t fun, worksheets aren’t fun, and tests aren’t fun. Than why are our schools based upon those three things? It is because we have always used those and we do not think of fun and creative to teach and evaluate student work.

Some suggestions we have for evaluating student learning in creative ways:

• Have students evaluate their own work.
• Class discussions.
• Have a worksheet cabinate where students can pick extra worksheets to do.
• Educational computer games/programs
• Let them plan a field trip or service project that corresponds to something they are learning about.
• Exit Slips
• A question or 2 about what they learned today. It's short and informal, they may not even realize that you are evaluating their knowledge.
• Create a game to play
• The fly swatter game: This game is where you split the class into 2 teams. On the board you have vocab terms. Each team gets a new representative each round. You ask the students the question and they need to find the word and hit it with their fly swatter.
• Have project sheets where there is more than one project option for students to choose from:
• Science Fair Project:
• This doesn’t not need to be in just a science class! Have the students make an argument or hypothesis and have them research that argument and present it to the class. ex. If a student is really into WWII, they could make the statement that: The use of U-boats by the Germans is an important contribution to modern war. Than they could do research and present the information they found.

• Videos:
• Window's Movie Maker
• Imovie
• Have students create movies to show their knowledge
• Here is an example I made to teach students about English, Science, Religion, and Music. 
•  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_OTZ80ubTA

•  Make a board game
• Give a speech
• Complete with costume and music 

• Make a newsletter
• Mind maps (flow charts):
• Start with a central idea, have arrows pointing to key concepts, from the key concepts, have more arrows pointing to other aspects of the central idea.
• Here is an example:

• Make a blog
• Whoo!  That's what we are doing!
• Make a magazine
• This was one of my favorite projects in High School. It was a partner project and we had to create a magazine that talked about multiple books we had read during the semester. This included articles, crossword puzzles, quizzes, ect.

• Create a Wiki
• Make an art project
• This was for math to show how shapes work together

•    

• Music: 
• Have the students make a song to demonstrate their knowledge

• Have a create your own sections
• Let the students chose their own project so they will be more excited about completing the project