If I had the magic secret to motivating students 100% of the time, I’d be a billionaire. We all know that nothing works ALL the time. But when everyone is tired of the routine, motivating students is even more of a challenge. Need some ideas? Here are ten ideas to try!

1 – Communicate with students regularly and not just in whole-group sessions. Greet your students when they enter your classroom by standing at or near the door (or greeting them when they log on for remote learning). Meet with them either one-on-one or in small group sessions for instruction, enrichment, or just for a quick check-in conversation to see how they’re doing.

I am currently scheduling brief, 5-minute check-ins with each student. I am trying to have six of those check-ins each week. Then I start my list all over again. These brief interactions keep me connected to my students and help me to adjust to their needs.

Here are some examples of questions I am asking:
*How is it going with math? Science/social studies? Reading/writing?
*What is hard for you right now?
*What is easy for you right now?
*What kind of assignments or enrichment projects would you enjoy doing more?
*What are some rewards or fun things you would like to do?

2 – Allow opportunities for students to work together on projects or assignments. Allow them to work on teams when playing class games (Quizlet Live is especially fun for making random teams).

Use breakout rooms as often as possible and assign specific jobs for each member of the group. Some examples of those jobs: someone to start the conversation (we call it the “facilitator”, or the one who gets the party started!), someone to take notes on the slide or document (and share their screen if necessary), someone to keep track of time, and someone to make sure that everyone gets a chance to talk/share.

3 – Set clear expectations. Let your students know what you expect during all learning sessions. This will automatically ensure perfect behavior and participation, right?! Okay, maybe not, but it does help eliminate any of the “but I didn’t know” excuses.

When/if a student is not participating in the ways that you expect, have a private conversation with them. Tell them what you’ve noticed and ask them if something is going on that you need to know. Very often, when I come from a place of “I’ve noticed and I’m concerned about you” (instead of “Why aren’t you . . .?), I learn something about the student that helps me better respond to their needs.

4 – Set up times to have students self-assess their work habits. Then meet with them individually to discuss their self-assessment and set goals for improvement. Setting achievable, individualized goals and working to meet those goals is empowering

Here’s an example of how I did that recently. I have a capable student who doubts himself. He was not completing math assignments and was falling farther and farther behind. In the world of online learning, all of those “missing” assignments in Google Classroom were overwhelming for him.

We did three things together. 1 – we created a better schedule for him to get the things done that he needs to get done. 2 – we went through his list of missing assignments and I chose several to just “let go” and forgive. We then made a list of the assignments he absolutely does need to get done. 3 – we made a deal to make the assignments less overwhelming. He will complete three problems for each math assignment. That’s all.

As a result, he is now completing more than three problems in each assignment (because he found that once he got started, he could do more than three problems quite easily). He also has zero assignments on the list of missing assignments each week. Setting small, achievable goals worked for him.

5 – One good thing about remote learning is that it forced me to learn and use all kinds of new digital tools. Some of my newest favorites are GimKit, Actively Learn, and EdPuzzle. When we try a new tool, I ask students about the pros and cons of the tool, what would make it better next time, what they would like to change or how we could use the tool in another way.

6 – Whenever possible, allow your students to be the ones to teach! Let them create presentations about something that interests them and present it to the class. Ask students to share their tips for different skills (like managing email in a remote learning environment). Ask students to share their background knowledge or experiences. Making your classroom a collaborative learning environment is very motivating for students and is a lot more fun for you too.

7 – Send positive feedback messages to your students frequently. I keep a class list on my clipboard and put a checkmark beside each name as I send an email message. I try to name something specific that I am seeing the student do, tell them a way that their behavior is helping them, and let them know that they should be proud of what they are doing.

8 – Consider sending brief, positive messages to your students’ families as well! These are not detailed progress reports, just quick notes to let families know that their children are doing a great job.

9 – Incorporate fun rewards for your students at random times. You could do a regular “Fun Friday” event of some kind that your students can look forward to (wearing pajamas to school, bringing a stuffed animal to remote learning, having a “camping day” where students create a “campsite” to do their work for the day). Or you could choose from my list of fun games to play in Zoom or Google Meet and incorporate one of those when you have a little time and when you want to reward your students for a job well done.

10 – Finally, do what you can do to create a warm and friendly classroom community. Playing games together, watching a brief fun video on YouTube together, encouraging students to talk about their lives and interests outside of the classroom, greeting students daily and showing that you’re glad they are in your class, encouraging students to interact with each other (in games, breakout rooms, by using the chat feature, giving each other feedback on presentations, etc.) will make your classroom a place where students want to do their best work.

Did you find one thing you could try next week? I hope so! Please share your own ideas for helping to keep students motivated when they’re tired of the routine!

Social-emotional learning, or SEL, is finally getting the recognition it deserves. With all the emphasis now on trauma-informed practices, restorative practices, and student wellness, teachers are getting the “permission” to focus on an area they have always known was important. There are lots of resources for social-emotional learning activities out there, but I’ve made a list of some of my favorites here. Check back (or subscribe to the blog) because I will update this post as I find and use new activities!

First of all, why teach SEL? According to this article from Edutopia, social-emotional learning improves academic achievement (by an average of 11 percentile points), but it also leads to positive social behaviors with peers and adults, improves attitudes toward school, reduces behavior issues, leads to improved test scores and grades, and it reduces stress and depression among students. With all of those benefits, we can’t afford to not teach SEL!

One of my favorite quotes is from Dr. James Comer:

“No significant learning can occur without a significant relationship.”

Social-emotional learning activities are one of the very best ways to build those all-important relationships with students and make our own teaching lives more rewarding and more productive. (SEL is good for teachers too!)

General Tips

Here are 12 general tips for getting started.

1 – build and maintain connections with every student. You can do this by building classroom community from the very beginning of the year, but it’s never too late to start or improve your community. Here are some posts with tips for building community:
~How to Build Classroom Community – 12 Easy Tips
~Using Class Meetings & Restorative Practices to Build Classroom Community
~Remote Learning – Building Classroom Community & Positive Relationships

2 – greet every student as they enter your classroom (even virtually) every day. This sounds simple, but in the course of a busy day, it’s easy to overlook something like this and get to the end of the day realizing you didn’t even connect with some students at all. The goal is to help every one of your students to feel “seen” by you each day.

3 – try to have one-on-one conferences with students as often as possible, even for only one or two minutes. A quick check-in to just ask how they’re doing, asking if they’re okay, asking if there is something you can help with goes a long way for showing students that you care about them. I try to have a quick check-in with every student once a week or once every two weeks. (When we’re learning in person, this is much easier to do.)

4 – establish daily routines/rituals for your class. Doing this at the beginning and the end of the day (or of each class) is especially important. The routine itself doesn’t matter. Just establish a positive and friendly tone at the beginning and a hopeful tone of looking forward to the next session together.

5 – take daily “temperature checks”. This can occur during those one-on-one conferences mentioned above or as you greet students when they enter your classroom. You can even do that as part of a class circle question (more about that in the next section).

6 – take weekly or bi-weekly “temperature checks.” Here is a link to a sample google form weekly temperature check. Make a copy and modify with your own questions!

7 – continue (or start) morning meetings or circles. Here is a link to my post about how to get that ritual started.

8 – use tools like email or google chat to check in with students and just ask if they’re doing okay. I did this even when I was teaching face-to-face. It allows students a more private way to answer your question and you can always follow up later with a face-to-face chat if needed. Never underestimate the power of that simple question: are you okay?

9 – one tip that I tried this year with success was to assign a greeting buddy to each student. When students logged into Google Meet, their buddy would greet them. If they were already in the Meet when their buddy joined, their buddy would still greet them in some way. They could do this verbally or in the chat. It helped to make us all feel a bit more connected.

10 – use breakout rooms and let students work together in smaller groups as much as possible. You can do this for social times as well as academic times.

11 – teach students about self-care. Some of the activities on this site will help you discuss self-care with your students.

12 – and finally – don’t forget about your own self-care. Teaching in any kind of setting is emotionally and physically draining. Adding other stressors (oh, like, say a global pandemic) makes it even more difficult. Give yourself time and space to take care of your own needs.

Circle Questions
Here, in no particular order, are some of my favorite circle questions. Pick and choose what works best for you and your class!

*on Mondays, share brags & drags from the weekend (brags = good things and drags = things that were not so great)

*share one word to describe something specific – one word to describe your morning, one word about something you’ve learned in the past week, one word about how you’re feeling about something that happened in the news

*share an emoji to represent how you’re feeling right now

*at the end of the day, share roses & thorns about the day (rose = good thing and thorn = not so good thing)

*another end of the day ritual we enjoy: share one of the 3 A’s – an appreciation (for something that happened today or for someone in the class), an apology (without going into detail about it), an a-ha moment (something that finally clicked for you today or that you discovered or learned)

*one fun way to use the chat feature in Zoom or Google Meet: ask a question and allow everyone to type their response in the chat, then to respond to two people’s answers (also in the chat). We call this “waterfall” because that’s how it looks when all the responses come in at once!

*”tell me something good” – tell about one good thing that has happened today

*share one thing you are looking forward to (today, this week, this month, this year)

*cheers! – raise hands or thumbs up if any of the following are true: you spent time outside yesterday or today, you have eaten at least one fruit or vegetable today, you drank water yesterday or today, you read a book for fun, you played a game with someone, you did something nice for your parents or a sibling, etc. The idea is to choose questions about activities that are under the child’s control and are things that would actually make them feel better when they do them.

*have a scavenger hunt – choose one (or a few) items for students to go find and show on screen. This could be items like: something you love, a favorite book, a favorite object, something that reminds you of something good, etc.

*”if” questions — if you were an animal, what animal would you be? If you were a color. . . If you were a machine . . . If you were a kitchen tool . . . If you were a school supply . . . If you had any superpower, what would it be?Students also need to tell why they chose their particular item, which is always insightful!

*share something you love right now (something you love to do, love to read, love to eat, a person, etc.)

*share something you are missing right now

*share something you are looking forward to doing again

*an alternative could be to ask students to draw a quick sketch of one of the questions above and to share that with the group

*allow students to change their background on Zoom or Google Meet and tell why they chose that background

*share gratitude – something or someone they are grateful for

*name something you don’t need, but that you’re really happy to have

*name something that made you smile today

*ask questions from one of the following books:
~101 Fun Questions to Ask Your Kids
~The Kids’ Book of Questions
~Would You Rather Questions for Kids & Their Adults

*speaking of “would you rather” questions, Rachel of Minds in Bloom has a great archive of questions (many with seasonal topics) HERE

*share a new hobby you’ve tried or something new you’ve been doing

*name something that made you smile today

*share a place in nature that you are grateful for

*who is an adult that you’re grateful for?

*share a favorite stuffed animal & tell why it’s special

*share a compliment or a shout-out for a classmate

*think of one thing you like about our class community and one thing you would change

*what is one skill or talent you wish you had?

*what is a sound/smell/taste/sight/touch that makes you happy and why?

*what’s your “weather” like today? (sunny, partly cloudy, mostly cloudy, stormy, etc.)

Self-care Tips
*Teach and practice mindful breathing. A helpful strategy is to think of deep breathing as 4-count process. Breathe in for four counts, hold your breath for four counts, breathe out for four counts, then hold your breath for four counts. Practice this as often as needed, but trying to intentionally practice this once a day is a good idea.

*Teach and practice various yoga poses as movement breaks.

*Encourage students to drink water throughout the day.

*Encourage students to create a screensaver of a landscape that makes them feel calm or to keep a picture of a calming landscape near their work area. Another option would be to keep a photo of their family or a pet nearby. Looking at something that makes you happy just makes you feel better!

*Keep an eye out for feel-good videos to share with your students. These might be stories about things that people are doing to help other people, fun stories about animals — whatever inspires you or makes you laugh will probably do the same for your students.

*Reading is one of my very favorite self-care tools, both for myself and to use as a teacher. When in doubt, take a few minutes for some read aloud. This can be an ongoing novel, a picture book, a short article, whatever fits your style and works for you. While there are many good resources online, this site created by Rachel Lemansky, an elementary library coordinator is my new favorite go-to site. Check it out HERE!

Hopefully, understanding the importance of social-emotional learning is here to stay. I hope you found some ideas that will work for you and your class!

Here we are – the long-awaited end of 2020. A year of unprecedented changes.

Instead of beating up on the year just past, I am taking a different approach.

One of the many social-emotional activities I did with my fifth graders last spring (and then with a new class of fifth graders this fall) was to focus on what is good about where we are right now.

So, with that in mind, think about what was good about 2020. (This is not to diminish any sense of loss or grief that you may have experienced this year, by the way. That is perfectly valid and needs to be expressed.)

Here are three questions I am using to reflect on what was good.

1 – how did I adjust my job and/or my daily routine?

If you are a teacher, here’s one amazing fact: without any warning whatsoever, you completely changed the way you do your job.

So take a moment and jot down all the good things you did.

Here are some ideas to get you thinking:

*transforming teaching resources and assessments into a digital format

*creating instructional videos

*incorporating more social-emotional activities into your instruction

*collaborating with teams of teachers to plan and create resources

*getting more efficient at doing all of this!

*figuring out new ways to conduct small group instruction

*becoming more proficient at Google Classroom or SeeSaw or Zoom or whatever other learning platforms your school uses

*learning and using new digital tools

*incorporating more fun activities (like class games or virtual field trips) into Google Meet or Zoom class time

*learning how to read aloud in new ways

*creating Bitmoji classrooms

*figuring out ways to create a classroom “space” in your home

I could go on and on, but I hope that this got you thinking about all the things you accomplished this year. And that’s just the job part of your life.

2 – Next, what were the good things that I did or good things that happened in other areas of my life?

Here are some questions to get you thinking:

*Did you figure out how to do your own job while also overseeing your children’s learning?

*Did you spend more time together as a family?

*Did you spend more time outside?

*Did you spend more time with a pet? (Or did you get a new pet?)

*Did you learn how to do something new?

*Did you spend more time doing something you already knew how to do but you don’t usually have enough time to do?

*Did you connect with family and friends in different ways? (Driveway visits, virtual meals or visits, old-fashioned letters)

3 – Last – think about what I did during remote teaching or during quarantine that I want to keep in my life or in my teaching, even when everything is back to “normal.” I want to create a “new normal.”

Some of my examples to get you thinking:

*spending more time on social-emotional learning helped me get to know my students in different ways. Academics are still important, of course, but I want to keep this focus on checking in with my students and making sure they’re okay before I push the academic focus.

*using Google Classroom kept me from drowning in all the paper

*I was forced to streamline some teaching, planning, and assessment tasks (shout out to Google form quizzes for doing a good bit of the grading for me!)

*more streamlined meetings! (Screen fatigue helped many of us to be more efficient in meetings.)

*wearing comfortable clothes and shoes all the time

*having my dog nearby while I was working made me happy. (I know I can’t take him to school with me when we return to the building, but I do plan to keep a picture of him nearby to remind me of who is waiting for me at home!)

*more family time, including more walks in nature and time outside

*having more of a sense of gratitude and appreciation for all the things that I just take for granted.

Before thinking about all the changes or ways to improve in a new year, spend a few minutes reflecting on the past year. What are the good things that happened for you? I’d love to hear about them!

Happy New Year!