How to Build hunger for learning in students?

Would you agree that a positive mental attitude is very important for learning, or for almost everything?

In fact, without a positive learning state which is primed for learning, you won’t be able to learn anything.

The real question is: how do you get your students into that learning state?

Before the learning starts, you want to build a hunger for it. Here are few things you would like to stroke in your students to build their desire for learning.

Desire and motivation [what’s in it for me?]

Humans need a reason for their actions, however small it is.

In a research, people were 50% more likely to give their chance to use a photocopy machine when asked with a reason, no matter what the reason. In this case, people were more likely to comply to - "Can I use the photocopier because I need to copy these?" than "Can I use the photocopier?". The reason here, even though non-sense, worked.

So, in order to better engage, give a reason - what can the learning do for the students. 

However, If you are like me and not fond of preaching, use the following method. 

Start with a question

Ask your students a question, and let them make conjectures (intelligent guesses), let them reason out and verbalize their reasoning. Once they are reasoning, then start explaining why their conjectures are wrong or right.

This has two advantages:

1. Since they would have started with what they already know, it's easier for them to link new information to the existing information.
2. Most importantly, they would be curious. You want them to be curious. When students are curious, they pay more attention and thus absorb more and learn better.

Ask them the potential benefits of learning what you are going to teach

What's important is that they see the learning as an investment, and not a wasteful activity. If they think it's a wasteful activity, that will surely turn off the learning mind.

So ask your students.. What do you think is a possible benefit of learning this topic?

Let them suggest answers. Write the answers down. Once they can see the answers it will engage them more, which translates to better learning.

So, what motivated me to learn about learning?

• Learning helps throughout life academically and professionally
• knowledge and skills become obsolete, learning doesn't
• Good learners make more money are more productive and flexible.
• You can also impart good skills to children and people around

Reinforce positively [Reward]

It's important to reward a positive behaviour. We will talk in detail about this in a future chapter.