The Motivated Classroom

One of the most frequently asked questions in the month of May is "have you any tips for keeping up the motivation at the end of the year... I'm struggling!". I hear you loud and clear. This episode focuses on how to maintain motivation, for both the students and you as the teacher, right until the end of the school year. I give an overview of some of the activities I have found to keep the motivation up right into the last few weeks and provide my take on the important underlying principles to ensure an engaged and motivated classroom, even when the holidays are only a few days away.

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In this episode, we have the pleasure of listening to renowned expert on multilingualism, Dr. Eowyn Crisfield. Dr. Crisfield shares valuable insights from the research on supporting multilingualism and also helps us to dispel some of the myths around bilingual children. This episode is full of vitally important nuggets of important for all educators, not just language acquisition teachers. A core message is the takeaway that we must all ensure we do everything we can to support and celebrate the entire linguistic repertoire of our learners and not force them to leave those home languages at the door. This is a must listen for all teachers.

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This episode features the influential and renowned language learner motivation researcher, Dr. Kimberly Noels. Dr. Noels is a full professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Alberta, Canada where she focuses on motivation and second language acquisition. Dr. Noels provides us with insightful perspectives on the current research around raising intrinsic motivation in the language acquisition classroom as well as a host of practical tips for the languages teacher. A fantastic discussion with a researcher we can all learn from. One night to be missed!

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The second episode with a direct focus on the core premise of this podcast: language learner motivation. In this episode I look in detail at three case studies shared by the listeners on demotivation and how we can turn this into intrinsic motivation in the language acquisition classroom over the last two years. Thank you to all the podcast patrons and supporters for sharing their scenarios and case studies. I'd love to know what you think of my take on these three cases in particular.

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In this episode we are going back to the roots and core premise of this podcast: language learner motivation. This episode focuses on what we have learned together about raising intrinsic motivation in the language acquisition classroom over the last two years of this podcast. In particular, we look at the research around building motivation and my take on what I'm calling the 'motivation-engagement-acquisition cycle'. I'd love to know your thoughts on it!

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In this episode we are joined by the wonderful and inspiring educator, Abelardo Almazán-Vázquez. Abelardo shares with us his journey and testimony as a cisgender male who is actively trying to interrupt and take apart the toxic masculinity and misogyny we experience in schools. This episode is full of excellent tips, advice and experiences to help us to work towards a more equitable and inclusive educational environment. An absolute must listen for all of us!

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This episode features one of the most impactful & inspiring interviews I've ever done, by far! The inspirational educator, Janique Vanderstocken, tells us about how she goes about doing trauma-informed teaching with her groups of illiterate students. Janique gives us a host of concrete tips, techniques and approaches to help students with very low literacy levels as well as those who are totally illiterate. She shares her classroom strategies in particular around working with students who are coming from very traumatic situations or backgrounds. Every teacher needs to hear this. This is an absolute must listen for anyone and everyone working in education!

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Teachers frequently ask about how we can continue to use a compelling, comprehensible inputs, approach with advanced learners. The key is to relinquish some of our own power in the classroom and provide increased autonomy to students, allowing them to plan, design and deliver their own classes. This episode explores one such approach with a group of advanced students of Spanish and how this increased autonomy led to higher rates of intrinsic motivation.

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A special, extended, episode focusing on the why and how of target language use in the language acquisition classroom with the brilliant Alina Filipescu and Jason Fritze. This episode was first aired as a livestream for the #CIReboot conference in summer 2022. Alina and Jason share lots of fantastic practical examples from their primary and secondary classrooms in order to help us all to use the target language as much as possible in the classroom. They also explain in detail why maximising our target language use is so critical. A real must listen episode for all languages teachers around the world.

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Error correction in the language acquisition classroom is one of those topics that always results in divided opinion. So what can the research tell us about it? In this episode we explore the role of error correction in writing, speaking and most importantly on learner motivation. How much is too much? When should we correct students and when should we say nothing? The answers, as always with language acquisition, are not straightforward but are worth looking into.

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This question and answer episode features some great questions from listeners about: What we do when new students come into our CI or acquisition focused classes when they're coming from what may be considered a much more 'traditional' learning environment? How do we adapt our lessons for adult learners and what about those 'difficult' classes, what suggestions are there to make them run smoothly? I try to give my take on these great questions in this episode but I'm sure many of you have much better ideas than I have. Please get in touch and let us know!

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This episode focuses on eight of my favourite activities designed to instil a love of reading among your language acquisition students, including a particular emphasis on the much requested "reading diary". Reading is the central and key element in language acquisition, yet many teachers are unsure about strategies to use in order to motivate our students into eager readers. Hopefully these eight, low-prep, activities will be of help!

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The third episode in the mini-series on "Teaching with Comprehensible Input (CI)" is a Q&A episode with some great questions from you wonderful listeners on CI being more inclusive than grammar teaching, what we talk to parents about when we teach with CI and what do we do when students miss lots of inputs through absence.

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In this second episode in the mini-series on "Teaching with Comprehensible Input (CI)", we discuss the big debates around CI teaching: Whether it is inherently more inclusive but often perceived as less authentic? What do we even mean by 'authentic' and 'inclusive' in the language classroom in the first place? Join me to find out my take on all this!

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The first in a five-part series on "Teaching with Comprehensible Input (CI)", focuses on the obstacles and resistance many of us face in our journey to become more acquisition centred educators. I discuss six of the obstacles I've had in my practice and those I've seen and heard about from other language teachers. 

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Should we separate our learners by ability? Setting, streaming or separating by ability is common practice in most schools in some way or form. But is it really best practice? Is there an evidence base to support doing this in our school? In this episode we discuss the research behind separating students by ability or setting and streaming as it is known in the UK. Does it work? Should we keep doing it? 

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Sadly, more and more language students around the world are dropping their world language courses as soon as they get the chance. Retaining students in our language programmes is proving more and more challenging. So what can we do about it? How can we increase uptake in our language classes. Many aspects are out of the control of the language teacher. However, what is in our control is our classroom and what strategies, approaches and practices we choose to employ. 

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Another question and answer episode, and another set of brilliant questions from the listeners. Should we assess writing or just do formative tasks with no corrections? When should grammatical accuracy take a role in assessment? How much English should we use when students don’t understand the target language? How do we ensure we don't overwhelm beginners? A huge thank you to all the listeners for the wonderful questions! 

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This episode follows up on the previous episode with Françoise Thenoux about bringing a diversity, equity, inclusion and social justice lens to our languages curriculum and classroom. We begin to unpack the big questions like "What is education for?" and "What is your languages class for?" in this episode and I provide a few practical ideas for how you can bring a more anti-bias and anti-stereotype lens to your languages classroom.

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In this episode, the brilliant Françoise Thenoux speaks to us about the inextricable links between language, identity and inclusion. Françoise shares how we can make everyone in our language classroom feel included by ensuring everyone's identity and history is represented. She shares tips and advice about how language teachers can get started on the route to a more diverse and inclusive classroom. A must listen!

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The target language: How much should we use as teachers? When should we use it? How should we use it? The debate around target language use, translation and use of the common language is one that many language acquisition teachers continue to grapple with. In this episode we unpack how and when to use the target language in class!

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In this question and answer episode, we discuss the most motivational and effective ways to start class, how often students should take notes in the language classroom and finally what we can do to build upon co-created class stories. A huge thank you to all the listeners for the wonderful questions!

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Parent-teacher meetings: A part of every teacher's year but often one that causes anxiety, stress and worry. In this episode I present six, easy, date-focused, steps to apply to your parent-teacher meetings to ensure they are effective and focus on student learning. While this episode highlights strategies that will be of particular use for language acquisition teachers, the steps can easily be applied across all subject areas. 

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This question and answer episode looks at how to overcome the difficulties of moving classrooms, what we can and should teach when we only see students for less than 1 hour per week and finally how we can go about creating a class slogan or motto based on our co-created values from the class constitution. Thank you to Sophie Harrison, Sophie Miller and Amanda Miller for the great questions!

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In this second episode in the 3-part series on motivating young language learners, Dutch teacher and author, Marianne de Best, tells us all about practical, zero-prep, strategies we can put in place right away in our classrooms to reach our young learners. Marianne provides listeners with excellent and fun tips to both reach and teach our young learners whilst staying in the target language and providing them with compelling, comprehensible inputs so as to acquire the language with ease! A must-listen for all language teachers! 

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In this episode, I had the absolute pleasure to be joined by eminent Self-Determination Theory researcher, Dr. Quint Oga-Baldwin. Professor Oga-Baldwin has conducted years of research into motivation of young learners of English in Japan and has published extensively. We discuss what classroom teachers can learn from the research on young learners and how we can apply these findings to build a more motivated classroom. Second and Third level language teachers also have so much to gain from the work done with younger learners!

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Music! A key component in every language acquisition classroom but what are the most effective ways to implement it! In this episode I discuss how I bring music into the classroom, ensuring it is understandable and engaging for the students! Most importantly, music allows us a direct door into the target language culture by learning about the lyrics, the background and the artists! I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. 

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This practical episode is all about listening activities in the language classroom that are designed to motivate and engage our students. Listening activities in a textbook are often painfully boring for our students due to the lack of autonomy. The 12 activities outlined in this episode engage and motivate our students to listen intently and therefore acquire more language naturally!

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What does the physical learning environment do for motivation and engagement of our language learners? In this episode, the idea of 'going deskless' is discussed outlining the pros, the cons and the logistical challenges. Research around the physical make up of the classroom is also explored and in particular the impact of classroom decorations and posters. How much is too much? Should we even have classroom displays?

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Thank you to all the listeners who submitted questions for this Q&A episode. We are discussing how to reach and motivate those particularly resistant students, what we can about the increased usage of online translators and finally how we can make teaching spelling fun, effective and engaging!

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In this episode we look at the research around parental beliefs, and the impact the words parents use have on the motivation for learning among their children. As always, lots of practical examples related to the language acquisition classroom and how we can use the findings from the parental beliefs research to inform how we speak to parents and ensure they are aiding us in the language acquisition journey.

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This episode explores some of the recent research about homework and how we can apply this to the language acquisition classroom. Should we even give homework in the first place? If so, how much and when? How can we ensure the homework we are providing is actually purposeful and not just 'busy work'? Have a listen to this episode and find out!

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In this episode we speak to the inspirational Dr. Florencia Henshaw about Second Language Acquisition theory, recent research in the area and how we can bring the classroom practice and the academic research together in a way that benefits all students. Dr. Henshaw shares her top tips for language acquisition teachers that stem directly from her research and are related to her forthcoming book entitled "Common Ground: Second Language Acquisition Theory goes to the Classroom".

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This episode explores the current debates around implicit and explicit knowledge in the language classroom; should we be focusing on meaning or form, or a combination of both. The focus of this episode revolves mainly around the recent Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research in this area and what we, as language teachers, can do to ensure we maintain motivation whilst also boosting acquisition.

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In this Question & Answer episode the questions focus on girls v. boys motivation, how to structure a class with no textbook and how to align a more acquisition based approach within school vertical and horizontal alignment policies.

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This is another practical, classroom, based episode for language teachers looking for the best ways to set up their class for the year. This episode contains twelve easy steps to follow to ensure you save yourself time in the future and have all your students set up for success from Day 1! From technology, to routines to classroom expectations and materials. It's all in this episode!

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This episode is very much focused on your classroom and how to use classroom jobs to provide more interesting input whilst building bonds with your class. This is a step-by-step guide about to introduce these jobs based on listeners feedback including:

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Special Extended Episode! To mark episode 50 of The #MotivatedClassroom we have a special extended episode with Dr. Karen Lichtman and Dr. Bill VanPatten who discuss their research peer reviewed publication on 40 years of Second Language Acquisition research. This podcast was first aired as a livestream for the #CIreboot conference in June 2021. An absolute must-listen for all #worldlanguages and #mfl teachers!

This is the second part of two-part episode on motivational strategies. In this episode we build upon the research around motivational strategies that was discussed in Episode 48, paying particular attention to the role of the language teacher in the motivational matrix. There now exists robust and substantial evidence that the language teacher can impact student motivation, for better and for worse. This episode is full of tips from the research to ensure you maintain that motivated classroom.

Ep. 48 of The #MotivatedClassroom marks the podcast's 1-Year anniversary with a jam-packed programme on 'motivational strategies', the research behind them and how we can apply these strategies to our classrooms using minimum prep activities. This is an episode not to be missed for any languages teachers who want a more motivated classroom!

In this question & answer episode we discuss how to survive as a student-teacher, what to do with an overly prescriptive curriculum, what would I tell myself as a student-teacher and what notes students should (or should not!) write in our language acquisition classes! 

The fantastic Maud Waret shares her personal learning and classrooms experiences as a mixed race French woman growing up in France and then moving to the UK as well as many wonderful practical ideas to help language teachers to begin to decolonise some of their curriculum. Maud speaks passionately, powerfully and practically. This is a real must listen episode for all language teachers seeking to have a more inclusive, representative and diverse classroom experience for their students.

In this episode, the inspirational Tan Huynh speaks about the use of Larry Ferlazzo's framework for empowering multilingual students as well as how we can all be more representative and inclusive in our choices of materials and the stories we share. Tan provides brilliant practical tips on how we can ensure our classroom is a welcoming, diverse space for all learners. This is a must listen episode for all language teachers striving to have a more inclusive learning environment where everyone feels welcome to be themselves and explore their own unique identity.

This episode is a follow up to Ep. 43 on 'Structuring a language curriculum without a textbook' and focuses on the individual language acquisition lesson and how I structure it to keep motivation at the forefront of each class. At the end of the episode I also speak about what this structure looks like in my lesson planning. I hope you find this practical episode useful!

Thank you to The #MotivatedClassroom patron, Margit Alexy, for prompting me to do an episode on how I structure a year of language acquisition curriculum without a textbook. In this episode I go into some detail about what my Spanish Level 1 sequence of learning looks like over a whole year, before giving a brief overview of what this translates into for older, more advanced, students a few years later in their language learning journey.

Anxiety, stress, nervousness and a high 'affective filter' is often discussed around language learning, but what happens when you focus on positive emotions? It's time we talked about the research behind positive emotions in the language classroom rather than focusing on the negative ones. In this episode I provide an overview of the key research in this area and how we can apply it to our classes to make the experience more welcoming, fun and interesting for our students. 

In this episode I am joined by the fascinating, knowledgeable and highly inspirational, Steve Smith, to talk about memory and motivation in the language classroom. Steve is a former Head of Modern Languages in England. He has taught French for over 30 years and is the author of the resources website frenchteacher.net. He has also co-authored five books for language teachers with with Dr. Gianfranco Conti with the latest being What Every language Teacher Should Know. This episode is an absolute must-listen for all language teachers!

Sitting all day is exhausting! This episode is full of practical ideas for active learning in the language classroom. Getting students up and out of their seats is a mainstay in every class I teach. Even just for a few minutes, it helps to re-engage the students in what is happening, it freshens things up and helps them to re-focus. It also helps to mix things up and keep that important aspect of 'unpredictability' in each class. I've mentioned some of these activities before, but with so many listeners asking about activities that aid acquisition but also get students up and active, here are all my favourites in one episode:

In this question and answer episode there are some wonderful questions from listeners on how to prioritise our class time, coping with colleagues who are reluctant to new initiatives, how to create interesting stories and supporting students' low confidence/self-esteem.

"How do you teach grammar in a motivational way?" is a question we all face as language teachers. In this episode we explore some of the research around explicit teaching of grammar and its impact on motivation. I then present some zero-prep classroom strategies we can use to introduce and develop understanding of grammar, but in a more autonomy-supportive, motivational style. 

Educational research consistently finds that motivation is the key factor in young people achieving their potential and succeeding at school. Demotivation, on the other hand, can be defined as “someone who was once motivated but has lost his/her commitment for some reason” (Dörnyei and Ushioda 2011). Even if we are struggling to understand how to motivate our learners, the very least we must ensure is that we are not actively engaged in activities that research has proven to be demotivating. This episode explores the research on these demotivating activities in the language classroom and what we can do to stop them.

In this episode I am delighted to be joined by the wonderful Diane Neubauer 杜雁子. Diane is a Mandarin Chinese teacher with over the 14 years experience across age groups. She currently teaches online part-time while working on her PhD in Foreign Language & ESL Education at the University of Iowa. She presents on a variety of language teaching topics at conferences and is involved in research relevant to comprehension-based language teaching and learning. She is currently chair of the ACTFL (USA language association) Comprehension-based Communicative Language Teaching (CCLT) Special Interest Group. Diane talks to us about her PhD research, teaching in the moment, language teacher professional development, raising engagement in the online classroom and what is involved with "language play". 

Thank you to the listeners for this question about how we can maintain motivation whilst also grading and assessing for proficiency. In this episode we discuss some strategies for assessing and grading keeping the core psychological need of competence in mind.

In this question & answer episode we explore some great questions from listeners about: what to do with reluctant learners or school refusers, how we can adapt a comprehensible input & storytelling approach for younger learners and finally what key language structures we should concentrate on in a reimagined syllabus focused around students' interests.

As language teachers, finding ways to move from comprehensible input to 'authentic output' or how to "foster an increase in natural, interpersonal language", as one teacher wrote to me, is often our greatest challenge. In this episode I provide ten zero-prep, practical, strategies to increase spontaneous and enthusiastic speaking in the language classroom. Get in touch and let me know what you think! I'd love to know what strategies work in your classroom!

I'm delighted to be joined by the wonderful and highly knowledgeable Dr. Ed Stevens for this episode on teacher's professional identity. Ed is Manager of the Arts & Humanities Research Institute at King's College London having previously been Deputy Head of Public Engagement at the University of Bath. He has recently completed a professional doctorate in Education, where he explored how educators' professional identities may be transformed by, and transform, community engaged research. In this episode Ed helps us to delve further into the language teacher beliefs we explored in Episode 31. 

Sometimes, to really change our practice we have to confront our deeply-rooted beliefs. The study of Language Teacher Beliefs or 'Language Teacher Cognition' is gaining momentum in the educational research. In this episode I talk about what the concept is all about and why it is essential for us to talk about it, reflect on our beliefs and ultimately to question whether or not we still value those beliefs we have inherently developed over decades of education both as a student and teacher. 

Teacher motivation: A hugely important topic we don't discuss nearly enough. In many countries around the world, teachers are leaving the profession in huge numbers. So what can school leadership do to ensure their teachers remain motivated? In this episode we delve into this thorny issue with a look at recent studies on teacher motivation and discuss what the research can teach us in terms of maintaining teacher motivation. This episode contains many practical, easy to implement, tips for school leaders, Heads of Department and for teachers themselves to help them to stay motivated.

Drawing on recent research around error correction and feedback, this episode provides six easy to implement strategies that allow the teacher to give meaningful feedback to students whilst ensuring it doesn't harm their basic psychological need of 'competence'. These strategies will hopefully give you some ideas about how we can ensure our feedback is timely, specific and meaningful to the student so that it helps them to move forward and not over analyse the errors that may be present. Most importantly, these are practical approaches to feedback designed to maintain and build motivation, rather then dampen it!

We all have to teach the 'basics' like numbers, dates, colours and letters in one way or another... or do we? What if the students just naturally acquired all of this basic vocabulary through motivational strategies and activities in the classroom? In this episode I explain how I introduce these items and the various, zero-prep, activities I use to embed these key words in the students' long term memory without having them sit and rote-learn in lists of vocabulary.

In this question and answer episode, we look at the topics of teaching culture, the one important thing to change in our languages classrooms (from my perspective at least!), how to build confidence in our learners and how to adequately challenge our high achievers in each lesson. Thank you to all the lessons who submitted questions!

Episode 25 of The #MotivatedClassroom is all about Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS) and the most common questions people have about it as a way to help learners acquire language more naturally. I go through some of the questions you have submitted about assessment, units, planning and many others! This is a very practical episode for language teachers who are trying out TPRS and still have lots of questions. 

Building on the interview with Adriana Ramirez in Episode 23 on using novels and reading to motivate our language students, this episode focuses on 11 zero-prep practical strategies for the languages classroom aimed at growing a love and passion for reading among your students: 

1. Class novels
2. Free Voluntary Reading (FVR)
3. Embedded readings & extended readings
4. Volleyball reading
​5. Read to parents and translate
6. The reading diary
7. Reading with laser and making new sentences
8. Reading and underlining all things you understand & Inventing questions with no answer
9. Highlighting the 1 key phrase and explaining why
10. Readers theater & Emotional reading
11. Boys and girls reading

So you listened to Episode 21 and you started your #TPRS story... but now what? This episode provides some detailed, zero-prep, practical, strategies you can implement in your language classes to build on and compliment the story asking process. I present comprehension techniques, homework tasks, formative assessment options. An overview of how the 'circling', questioning, strategy is done in a Comprehensible Input classroom is also provided.

This episode provides a synopsis and summary of the findings from Doctorate research into the motivational impact of teaching languages through storytelling and reading. The episode begins with an overview of how the research was conducted using Self-Determination Theory and its basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness to measure changes in motivation. It then presents some of the quotes from both the teacher and her students regarding their motivation, need satisfaction and engagement throughout the year of the study. 25 minutes is unfortunately never going to be enough to go into all the findings so there will be more episodes that go into further detail around some of the core conclusions from the year long research study.

In this third interview of the series, the inspirational Beth Skelton shares with us her vast experience and expertise relating to teaching languages through compelling, cultural and historical content. Beth outlines how we can use language classroom to engage our learners via experiential learning with students immersed in fascinating cultural and historical content related to the target language. This one is an absolute must listen for all EAL and world languages teachers containing lots of practical, easy to plan, activities that you can try right away!

In this second Q&A episode, some great questions from listeners get us talking about long-term motivation for learners as opposed to just dealing with the 'here and now' in our classrooms; how do we balance motivating activities with preparation for high stakes exams and finally some motivating classroom approaches for retrieval practice. Lots of practical classroom tips as well as important information about the current research around motivation and how to build it in our learners.

In this episode I explain how I build on those relationships built in the first few years of students' Spanish learning journey, taking those more advanced and older students to a new level as 'Government Ministers' in my (fake) country of Españoland. It provides them with autonomy and ownership over what we learn and the resources we will study together as a group. By empowering them to be members of your 'Government' it not only teaches them about democracy and leadership but also allows them to become real experts in their chosen 'Ministry' before those final exams. If you teach older teenagers who have more advanced level of language, this episode is for you!

'The Star of the Week' also known as 'The Special Person Interview' is a wonderful, zero-prep, activity that provides your students with huge amounts of compelling, comprehensible input as they learn about and make connections to their classmates and to the teacher. A beautifully simple activity that raises autonomy and is all about building bonds and a sense of community in the classroom.

When we have active, enthusiastic, engaged participation, it has the potential to over-spill and feel chaotic. So how do we encourage this high level of participation in class without it reaching a stage that begins to impact on our classroom management and behaviour expectations? In this episode, using evidence from the research, I offer my three key elements for effective classroom management in the motivated classroom:

Every subject, every syllabus, every curriculum has a story behind it. Its time we re-humanised the classroom and the curriculum. This episode focusses on how we can weave narrative back into our classes to engage our learners and have them come on a learning journey with us. During this episode I give a live example of how I take students into the curriculum using the 'four Ps' approach. Behind everything we teach in every subject there are:

When we focus on this and allow students to become immersed in the story behind our content, we engage and motivate them. We hook them into the learning so they feel part of it throughout the entire unit. 

This episode is all about putting Comprehensible Input (CI) into practice in the classroom. Three practical, minimal prep, CI activities are presented that you can try out right away. These are activities that will really help your learners to feel a sense of belonging in the class, whilst also boosting their competence as they can follow along and understand all of your input. I really encourage you to give them a try!

The first Question & Answer episode deals with a variety of questions mainly relating to teaching languages and motivation. Thank you to the listeners for these great questions. There were many others I did not have time to get to but will answer them in the next Q & A episode.

This episode focusses on 'competence', one of the three basic needs of Self-Determination Theory that we need satisfied in order to feel intrinsically motivated. Competence relates not to a student’s individual ability but to their perception about their capability and capacity to achieve success in the classroom. Central to the notion of competence, is that students will only engage in and personally value classroom activities they can fully understand and potentially master.

This episode is all about engagement, active learning and retrieval practice. 'Retrieval practice' is a study technique where mental effort is used to recall information. It focusses on bringing information to mind which enhances and boosts learning. Deliberately recalling information forces us to pull our knowledge “out” and examine what we know. 

Engagement and active learning strategies align closely in the research. When students are up out of their seats they are often more engaged in that moment. That is not to say they should be up doing games all lesson but now and again, getting students out of their seats can be hugely beneficial. Especially when coupled with 'retrieval practice' activities. 

In this episode I outline 11 (not 10!) zero-prep, active learning, strategies designed to engage learners in retrieval practice:

Relatedness is the second key component of motivation that we have looked at in The Motivated Classroom podcast. Listen back to Episode 1 to learn about the three basic psychological needs we all have and want to be satisfied in order to be intrinsically motivated. In Episode 3 we discussed 'autonomy' and its critical role in boosting motivation. This Episode goes into detail about the psychological need of 'relatedness'.

The episode introduces some of the main educational research on building relationships and how we can apply this in our classrooms. This episode is a must-listen for language teachers as it gives lots of zero-prep activities and tips you can implement right away in your classes to connect with your students. I explain some of the following activities I use in my classes to foster relatedness and relationships right from the first class:

✔️ The class password
✔️ Personal questions and answers (PQA)
✔️ Story sharing
✔️ Special person interviews
✔️ Using pets and photos of you
✔️ Student jobs
✔️ Intent listening
✔️ Use of 'high 4s' or 'high 3s'
✔️ Allow the lesson plan to go 
✔️ How to be fair but strict
✔️ Using class constitution for classroom management

What is 'autonomy-supportive' teaching and how do we do it in the #languages classroom?

Autonomy is an essential component of intrinsic motivation and is often considered in the research as more central to building motivation than any of the other basic psychological needs. In this episode, I share how I build perceptions of autonomy in my learners and also the classroom strategies that allow us, as teachers, to develop our own autonomy and thus foster our own teacher motivation. 

How can we set up the very first class of the year to ensure the three basic needs of intrinsic motivation are right at the heart of lesson?

In this first episode of The Motivated Classroom podcast I discuss: