9 May 2025

I have been thinking about motivation and the reasons behind it when it comes to student learning. We know ourselves the difficulty we can experience when trying to approach some tasks and others just come so easily and there are no barriers! Procrastination!

Intrinsic vs Extrinsic is an area we often talk about as educators. I worry that there can tend to be an over emphasis on reward... if you do X you will get Y... Yet some research does suggest that extrinsic can in fact grow into intrinsic. We certainly see some good examples of this.

I've talked about goals quite a bit and as you will know we do have a big emphasis on goal setting and reflection. Goal setting and striving to achieve the goal is a big part of motivation. I am constantly amazed about how our children can talk about their goals and the steps they need to take to get them there. I am sometimes concerned too that we also need to let children be free at times and just be kids - just be! I like the quote from Seth Godin  “The thing about goals is that living without them is a lot more fun, in the short run. It seems to me, though, that the people who get things done, who lead, who grow and who make an impact… those people have goals.” 

So maybe it's that balance of fun and striving to achieve goals or even better if the striving to achieve goals is also fun!

When you meet with teachers for upcoming progress meetings this is a time where you will be able to reflect on what goals were set at the beginning of the year, where your child is currently at and where they are heading. Some goals may have been achieved, some will be more lofty and macro - within those goals there will be plenty of small micro goals being achieved that are all leading to the big one. Hopefully you will see progress well before formal meeting times. This may be on seesaw or in informal catch ups with teachers.

We really encourage face-to-face chats as this strengthens the partnership between school and home, so if you would like to understand anything better before these progress meetings please don't hesitate to make a time with your child's base group teacher.