Virtual Teacher

Parents, teachers and tutors know well that apathetic and unmotivated children represent a problem of almost epidemic proportions in our classrooms, in particular, at the highest-grade levels. The most important question to answer is what a teacher or a tutor can do to motivate a reluctant, apathetic, and/or helpless learner. This is no simple question with an easy answer. One motivational strategy that can help is the use of effort praise . In few words, this is how this strategy works: Minimize the child’s mistakes and praise his effort. Help the child understand that errors and mistakes are part of the learning process, and they are necessary so that learning can take place. It is important that adults pay attention to small changes, so that we can praise those first signs that indicate movement toward the child’s goal (for instance, when we see the child focused and completing the task). Some examples of effort praise are: Your math is improving every day. I’m really gl...

Make sure the child clearly sees the connection between his own effort and school success. Children who perceive this connection are more likely to respond to difficult tasks and failure with less frustration and with positive expectations about the outcome of the event. Make sure that you define effort correctly, telling the student that effort is spending effective and strategic time on the learning task. Just trying harder or spending time doing random activities that are not working is not effective effort. Effective and strategic effort focuses on using learning strategies and procedures, that is, trying hard in a particular way is what leads to success. When the strategy or procedure that the child is using is not working, we tell him or her to try a different strategy or procedure. Teaching children to make strategic effort attributions help them see failure and academic difficulties as problem solving situations in which the search for a better strategy to use becomes ...