Motivation in Lockdown.

Tonight I attended a video talk by Harry Flether-Wood called "Supporting student motivation and engagement when learning from home."

Image from Pixabay. 

I choose to join this session to help me better understand others views on this learning from home digitally and to see how similar they are to what I am already doing. I also wanted to see if I could gain some insight into improvements I could make to my learning from home site.

Harry is a trained teacher who has taught at schools in Japan, India and the UK.

What does the research say:
The need to choose what is most important.
How do I form habits for my students?

• Help to keep the learning happening without teacher nagging. 
• Help students to plan study routine. 
• Children should be thinking about making a plan. 
• Social norms. 

What habits would be useful in distance learning?

• Keep it simple. 
• Turn up.

The more complicated we make a habit the easier it is to maintain. 

We need to help children pick a time for each thing they do. Help children get a detailed plan. Link habits to existing habits. I eat breakfast, then I do reading. 

There as been a lot of talk of schedule and structure. My program does not at this stage have a time table. You do reading from 9-10 etc. 

Suggested whole school and something closer to the kids. 

Motivate kids by the fear of missing out. Conversation could be more productive through chat maybe? Calling on kids in the hangout will help the conversation continue. 

Similar task will help keep things simple and allow for children to engage without as much teacher scaffolding. 

Think about what we want children to know when we get back to the classroom.  

So what?

I think the points raise around routine are valuable and something I will look at talking with the kids about. I don't think this is a one size fits all in terms of routine. Every does reading at 9am etc does not fit our current context. But I think we need to have more of a conversation on this topic as teachers and with the children and their families.

Thanks to The Education Hub for hosting this webinar. I will link to the video once it is up.