Motivating Lazy Students

Teaching is a rewarding and satisfactory career but it can frustrate you when you have to deal with unmotivated lazy students. If you have lazy students in class, you should devise some strategies to motivate them. Here are some guidelines in this regard:

• Encouragement is the first and foremost strategy which you can follow. Reward lazy students if they ever participate in class activities. These rewards should not necessarily be gifts or something. Just a praising word like “good effort” or “good job” is enough. When a student feels an experience of inner accomplishment and satisfaction, he is more likely to become motivated.
• Build a rapport with students. A good teacher always makes students feel comfortable and confident and thus succeeds to create a safe and positive environment. Students always want to be cared and understood. They should be given confidence that it is really all right even if they give wrong answer to a question.
• Do not only teach the students but get them involved in class. Create opportunities where lazy students can participate. Make assignments more interesting and engaging. For this, you will need to modify your lesson plans. Try to turn your lecture into a discussion class or a fun activity. An interesting and bouncy lesson motivates students.
• Make students feel that they have choices and powers in their educational life. Make your assignments flexible so that students may decide how to involve themselves. For encouraging lazy students, allow them do some projects on their interests even if these projects are not a part of study.
• Encourage students to work as a team. Let them complete their projects as a team. It will give students a chance to feel that they belong to each other. This will also motivate lazy students to contribute more of their efforts.
• Make students know that lessons relate to their real lives as well. When they will feel that lessons affect them personally, they will pay more attention to lesson. For discussions, choose topics from newspapers and let students analyze them to learn life lessons.