Motivation: The Inside Story

Are your students inspired by your lessons or has their interest expired!? What can you do to attract their attention and generate intrinsic motivation? Are there any strategies you can use or is it just a question of inspiration? These are some of the questions we will address in this session. First we will examine exactly what is intrinsic motivation and how it compares to extrinsic motivation. We will see how it is connected to attention, and how learning depends on quality of attention. Then I will present a strategy to help teachers identify attention magnets - texts and tasks with intrinsic appeal which will attract students' attention.

Slides and handouts are downloadable below. You can also listen again to the first part of the talk, and to the poems that you wrote. A report of the talk is available here.

The detective work picture and lesson notes are here.

The Nightmare Hotel poem, lesson notes and audio are available here.