If you want to help students motivate themselves, there should be a balance provided intrinsically and extrinsically. Autonomy, competence, relatedness, and relevance are the four qualities that are critical for this process. They are the 4 essential parts of Classroom Management Strategies. Let’s go through these 4.

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Autonomy

For promoting learner autonomy, one strategy is to provide your students with the freedom of choice. Generally, us educators think of this idea through the view point of organization and procedures. As an example, an organizational choice might enable students to speak out for seating assignments or make teams for their learning groups. As for procedural choice, it gives your students a chance to select from a given list of homework choices.

Cognitive choice is a third point put forward by some researchers. They believe that this would be a better approach to provide student autonomy. Cognitive method would include ideas such as:

• Students developing ideas for homework related to the topic
• Students sharing different approaches and thinking processes for solving problems
• Problem based learning – where a class splits in to small groups to come out with solutions to issues
• Teachers making use of the thinking routine to initiate the students to think and ask questions and learn by becoming inquisitive

Competence

Feedback is highly important to boost the morale of students, and a crucial part of classroom management strategies as well. When a student does well, we should praise their effort. Praising effort has a significantly higher impact than praising intelligence. The latter forces the student to not risk their genius status. But when you praise the effort taken, it makes them understand that one learns through hard work.

For healthy learning, providing critical feedback is also necessary. Plussing is the strategy to be used here. It is a concept used by Pixar animation studios with a high rate of success.

Recommended Read: 7 Awesome Creative Classroom Ideas

Relatedness

A key factor in developing intrinsic motivation in students is by creating good quality relations with tutors they respect. When you or your teachers take a genuine effort in developing these relationships, it pays off really well. Here are some steps to go forward in this path:

• Be genuinely interested in the students – Take an interest in their dreams and interests. Keep an open communication which is two way. Share your stories with them and hear theirs out too.
• Be flexible – Understand their needs, read their minds, and become slightly flexible in what you demand from them. Being gentle and lenient with them could help off rather than being too strict and adamant. It could be alright to change the rules once in a while. Keep eyes on the learning goal prize.
• Become more friendly – Make some small jokes, laugh with them, give a good smile, and also give a gentle supportive pat on the shoulder.
• Do not give up on your students – Be positive and do not give up on your students. They will strive their best to meet your expectations, but if they fail, motivate them. Encourage them to grow.

Relevance

The students need an understanding of how learning the syllabus is when it comes to application in real life. Have them write about it. It would definitely encourage growth and positive learning gains. . This makes the students connect to it at a personal level as well, which leads to a better learning.

Making real life connections to what they teach is one of the most common Classroom Management Strategies by teachers. But, this could have a negative impact for students who have low skills. They tend to under-perform. As such, it is important to let the students make their own connections and learn from them rather than forcing them to follow exactly what the teacher thinks.