Chapter 7- Activating Prior Knowledge & Increasing Motivation

All students are cognizant and mentally specialized, if I may, in select areas of intelligence of some sort. For example, students may be experts in areas ranging from sports(baseball, hockey, stick ball, etc.) to academics (mathematics, English, etc). All children (and adults) have mental file folders entitled: prior knowledge or schema (a fave word from intermediate block). Some folders may be jam-packed and overloaded with data,memories,experiences,faces and places. Where as others may be new, bright, crisp yellow folders still enveloped in its clear Saran wrap-like packaging. Pardon the analogy.

There is nothing more challenging than a student who is unmotivated. Not only is he/she paving his/her way toward educational injustice and voluntary neglect, he/she is also making the teacher's job twice as hard. Unmotivated students are the hardest to teach and instruct, simply due to their lack of motivation and "drive". What's a teacher to do??? Answer: Activate their prior knowledge! Find out what interests your students. Make connections. Give an interest inventory. Take a classroom poll on who likes this and who likes that. Allow them to verbalize their interests to you and the class. Get them involved. Develop a sense of classroom community.

Students are always more likely to stay engaged in something they find interesting and/or something they already know about. Encourage students to pull out those file folders that are tucked away in the many crevices of their brains. Teachers can help students "open" and activate these "file folders" by providing many different techniques and strategies. Anticipation guides are a great tool for this. However, as with any technique/strategy DO NOT OVER KILL IT! Using one tech/strat will weaken the effectiveness of any lesson/concept/idea. Pre-Reading Plans (PREP)also activate prior knowledge. The K-W-L is one of my favorites. I won't OVER KILL IT, I promise. I like the K-W-L (Know, Want to know, Learned) because it provides the student with a written visual of what they already know regarding a topic, what they want/hope to learn regarding a topic, and what they learned afterwards regarding a topic.

As with every aspect of education, teachers should remember to remain patient, as hard as it may be at times, with their students. Teachers need to be encouraging and visibly passionate regarding all students' success. They should possess a caring attitude. They should set high yet realistic goals and expect high yet realistic outcomes. Sound impossible??? Trust me... It's not.