MILANIE B. CABANADA, Teacher III, ZARAGOZA CENTRAL SCHOOL

Learning by doing is relative to working on things with enjoyment. Students learn better when they are motivated and happy to do their task. Appropriate motivation and teaching strategies can energize classroom activities, thus, discouraged monotony and boredom during class discussions.
According to studies, the child’s attention span only ranges from 7 to 15 minutes, and within that short period of time, teachers must haste on picking up the most desirable activities to gradually lengthen the temper and make the best of learning possible. Related educational games and unique strategies along with feasible work place will serve as effective stimulus to help save the day.
Learning can be better link to gardening and sowing seeds to the readiness of learners’ minds to absorb knowledge and skills. In gardening, the grower must first plan for the right season, choose the most appropriate pots for the most arable soil and for the most brilliant seeds to put it on. The same is true with utilizing proper motivation for fruitful teaching and learning process. Right timing for learners’ moods and readiness must be consider. Appropriate stimulus should link to the lesson topic. Alongside with this, perfect delivery of the stimuli will test the effectiveness of motivation to learn specific concept.
Children love child-friendly learning milieu, they are naturally curious on many things, so we must prepare various manipulative stuff for them to tinker on, and discover the mysteries of ideas behind it. It would seem they are playing the whole time, but in fact, they are actually learning at the same time.
Motivation as part of teaching strategies comes into various ways. As to material learning stimulus, the use of puzzles, manipulative toys and blocks, reading flashcards, among others. For individual, small and big group participation, there goes the read and tell, film watching followed by question and answer activity, trail games, throwing ball game and others. The use gadgets for interactive participation has also high efficacy for motivation like the use of whiteboard for survey questions, online apps such as Kahoot, Mentimeter, Class point, etc.
Attractive presentations for classroom sharing has also undeniable impact to get learners’ attention like PowerPoint and Canva slide sharing. The use of multi-media incorporated in the presentation also grab children’s responses like the info graphics, graphic organizers, animated images, audios, and videos. All of these serve as magical craft to grab learners’ attention and willingness to learn more beyond the actual learning time.
Learners also get motivated when they were given special spotlight during class discussion. Showcasing their talents and skills is an effective practice. With this they would feel that they are important and their skills exemplified their unique personality. Active learners would love to sing, dance, act, and report in front of the class, while the reserved ones would love do art works, perform experiments, create art crafts, make some environmental activities like gardening, and some hooked-up in writing short stories and poems. With diverse learners’ expertise, it is best to give them appropriate venue to hone their knowledge and skills even better.
Teachers as educators of the youth aimed for a long term efficacy of learning inside the classroom. This is the reason why all the efforts and hard works seem to be endless. Researches and studies are still on-going to find the most effective learning stimulus for the school children. It is the teachers’ pledge to find ways where children would learn better to become productive and become descendants of desirable values, intelligence, and talents. All of which started with the useful motivation and innovative teaching strategies utilized by teachers in the classroom.
Knowledge retention and mastery of skills is the result of effective teaching and learning experiences. The end product of multiple enjoyable classroom scenarios blend with teachers’ artistry and the learners’ curiosity.