How to increase students' motivation for Mathematics

Mathematics is often considered a villain during elementary and high school. But the truth is that it would be difficult to imagine our routine without its various resources. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to negotiate, check the time or put things in order without the numbers?

Many things that we carry out in our daily lives depend on them and that is why we must direct a different look at this discipline. Of course, motivating students to be receptive to it is not an easy task, but it is one of the most important aspects of being successful in teaching it.

An important tip for teachers who want to increase their effectiveness is to focus their attention on students who are less interested, just as they pay attention to those who are more motivated.

To help you be even more productive in teaching this subject and teach students how to love math, we will present some strategies or techniques that can be used to motivate students aged 10 to 18 years. Check it out below:

Strategies to increase student motivation in Mathematics:

1. Discover a Pattern

In order for students to discover a pattern for learning certain content, you can set up artificial situations. The technique basically consists of suggesting something that they are pleased to find the result of and, subsequently, are able to understand the idea. An example would be presenting the sum of numbers that would result in the same amount, such as: 1 + 50 = 51, in the same way as 2 + 49 = 51. This type of exercise will be very useful for your students to acquire an enlightening experience about the content.

1. present a challenge

A great tip to enthuse your students and encourage them to learn the subject is to propose intellectual challenges, as long as you are very careful in your choice. It's important to balance the difficulty of the challenge and your students' abilities, so that they don't feel frustrated or unable to develop something.

1. Use Recreational Math

To make the math class more interesting and attractive, you can count on recreational motivation resources, which refer to puzzles, games or paradoxes. These devices must complement learning, in a simple and brief way, as this will result in a specific motivational gain.

1. Tell a curious story involving mathematics

Contextualizing something can also be a great way to improve your students' learning. If you tell the story of a historic event or a common everyday situation, you can draw much more attention to the content being taught. For the strategy to be really valid, it is important that the teacher is not in a hurry to tell the story.

1. Ask Students to justify mathematical trivia

Another very useful technique for motivating students is to ask them to justify one of many pertinent mathematical trivia. For this strategy to really take effect, it is essential that students are familiar and comfortable with the mathematical curiosity that will be explored before being challenged.