How to Motivate Children

How to Motivate Children: For the classroom, homeschool, teacher, parent and administrator

Low reading scores. Fighting. Yelling. Inappropriate outbursts. Getting out of one’s seat. Incomplete work. ​Interrupting others. Lack of interest.

All of these behaviors are disturbing to parents, teachers and administrators; but when they occur repeatedly, it drives teachers and parents to want to simply quit. These behaviors are not just frustrating and disturbing to adults but lead to self-defeating attributes for the child, limiting their progression in the attainment of lifelong learning characteristics. To deter these undesired behaviors, a more productive atmosphere can be created based on behavior modification, value foundations, effective learning communities and increasing personal behaviors.

Course Objectives

• Understand behavior is influenced by consequences.
• Identify consequences to develop student motivation.
• Recognize positive and negative reinforcers.
• Create a plan to bring extinction to undesirable behaviors.
• Develop an understanding for prompt reinforcement.
• Using reinforcement to embed desired behaviors.

By Tracy Atkinson

Tracy Atkinson, mother of six, lives in the Midwest with her husband and spirited long-haired miniature dachshunds. She is a teacher, having taught elementary school to higher education, holding degrees in elementary education and a master’s in higher education. Her passion is researching, studying and investigating the attributes related to self-directed learners and learning styles. She speaks at conferences on learning styles and has published several titles, including MBTI Learning Styles: A Practical Approach, The Art of Learning Journals, Calais: The Annals of the Hidden, Lemosa: The Annals of the Hidden, Book Two, Rachel’s 8,   The Personal Pursuit of Perfection and Securing Your Tent. She is currently working on a non-fiction text exploring the attributes of self-directed learners: The Five Characteristics of Self-directed Learners. Check out her online courses at: Udemy.