Tu Linglong. How to Enhance Motivation in Primary School Homework [eb ol].（2023-12-22）
In primary education, "teaching but not knowing" is a common phenomenon, and teachers may be able to find out through exercises and assignments to help students go from "can't learn" to "learn to understand".
Scientific Design: Define goals and match quantity and quality
Practice is an important way to help students fill in the gaps, and it plays an indispensable role in students' learning. Of course, more exercises are not always better, and teachers should take into account many factors of students when assigning exercises. The exercises are divided into in-class exercises, pen exercises, etc., and homework after class. Whether it is an exercise in class or an after-class homework, it is necessary to set clear goals first, and the teacher guides the students to make a self-goal setting, so that students can have a higher level of awareness of a certain concept and skill, and clearly know what they are doing, rather than completing the teacher's "requirements". Secondly, a qualified exercise should first be appropriate for the student, with both the right "amount" and the right "degree", with a moderate level of difficulty, not too difficult. Over time, students learn at a rate close to the Ebbinghaus curve, so repeating the practice at different intervals can help students better consolidate their knowledge and skills.
Internalized motivation: From easy to difficult stimulates motivation and a sense of achievement
Of course, teachers should assign some more basic exercises, although these exercises are often considered boring and repetitive, and then assign some improvement questions after more simple basic questions, and these improvement questions can be discussed by students in groups, and mutual help between classmates will often stimulate students' interest in learning. The 2022 new curriculum standard strongly advocates the integration of teaching and evaluation, and if students find progress in learning in the process of self-evaluation, then their self-satisfaction and personal belief can be improved. Students' motivation to learn does not come from the task itself, but from their use of self-monitoring and the impact of these processes on self-belief. What the teacher has to do is to skillfully arrange all this to happen, from easy to difficult, let the students practice a lot, discover their progress, and in the process, let the students discover and self-regulate to improve.
Flexible management: accept trial and error and give expectations and encouragement
In reality, teachers often "break the defense" because of the frequent occurrence of the dilemma of "teaching but not knowing", and have negative emotions such as anger and disappointment on students, which in turn affects the occurrence of teaching. Growth is a process, the birth of a teacher is also from the ignorant young normal students step by step to a front-line teacher who can teach well and manage people, for children to learn new knowledge is the same, they need a process of continuous exploration, trial and error. What teachers should do is to help students correctly understand the role of "making mistakes", instead of "getting angry", which will further worsen the situation and cause students to have a "fear of difficulties" and become afraid of learning and making mistakes. On the contrary, teachers should reflect on themselves, if it is reflected in the homework "teach but can't", then can the homework be too difficult?Is there a problem with the arrangement of the assignment?Teachers set too high goals for the children, etc.
In short, instead of attributing the reason for failure more to the students, we should see the students' shining points, give them encouragement and expectations, be full of expectations for each child, and give them positive encouragement.