Chapter 7: Activating Prior Knowledge and Increasing Motivation

As I sit in class bored out of mine, due to lengthy power-points and boring lectures, I begin to question myself on the ways I will reach my students. Will I lose my students in boring lectures? How will I motivate them into learning? Reading this chapter was very useful because it went into depth about how to increase motivation in your students and activate their prior knowledge.

Conley stated that it is very important that we meaning educators should get to know where our students are before we start introducing new topics. Getting to know where your students are will help you develop great lessons that will broaden their knowledge, because when teachers fail to do this, you waste valuable time teaching facts that students are already familiar with. Teachers should also become familiar with different experiences students have dealing with their families and the community. By knowing this helps motivate students because you can build on their prior knowledge. Building on student's prior knowledge makes learning fun and meaningful.

When teachers activate students prior knowledge, it is more than having students think about what they know. They need to learn how to use their prior knowledge to help them interact with the text to get the most out of learning. A tool teachers can use to see what they students know or what they are interested in learning are anticipation guides. Anticipation guides are a list of statements that students will respond to by agreeing or disagreeing. Anticipation guides can also be used to help students become familiar to the concept they are about to focus on. I know in my classroom I will use tools such as anticipatory guides and interest surveys in order to help me get to know what my students already know, so I can develop lessons that will increase motivation and activate their prior knowledge. I don't want to be known as the teacher that is boring!