5 Wonderful Ways to Motivate Students to Make Decisions

September 21, 2021 / Parent Resources

Students can make decisions when they’re offered several choices. When you give them choices, you provide them with opportunities to explore their identity and effectively practice decision-making.

Here are 5 ways you can provide your students with choices:

Encourage voting

Give your students autonomy by asking them to vote. For example, you can ask them which book they’d like to read in class that day. Whichever book receives the most votes could be the book of the day.

Assign class jobs

When each student is given some responsibility, they feel more confident to make decisions. Assign them particular tasks based on their interests and skills.

Practice unstructured learning

Towards the end of class, set aside a few minutes to prioritize choice-making. You can do this by revising a concept in an unstructured way. For example, your students could choose which topic they’d like to revise, which educational activities they’d like to do, and so on.

Consider flexible seating

It’s natural for students to sit next to their closest friends every day. However, when you make seating arrangements more flexible, you teach them to cooperate with each other; you teach them to be more flexible in their ways.

Reconsider assigned reading

Giving your students a particular book to read might make them feel like they “have to” read rather than “want to”. Give them the opportunity to read any book they like, and then they can talk about the themes they enjoyed in the book.

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