The excitement of a new school year can bring a burst of energy, but keeping young people engaged week after week is a different challenge.
This month, we’re exploring Motivation and sharing strategies for making participation feel relevant, accessible, and meaningful. We’re looking at different ways to invite participation, understanding what motivates young people, and identifiying what may be getting in the way.
Let’s build the skill together
Build the Skill: Motivation
- Multiple Entry Points: Create multiple ways for young people to enter, participate, and contribute. Offer choices such as discussion, movement, writing, leadership roles, hands-on tasks, or small-group participation so youth can engage in ways that feel accessible and meaningful.
- Personalized Motivation: Develop engagement strategies that connect activities to individual interests, goals, strengths, and motivations. Take time to learn what matters to young people and use those insights to make participation feel relevant rather than required.
- Youth Feedback Loops: Continuously gather and integrate youth feedback into program design. Use quick check-ins, exit tickets, pulse surveys, and informal conversations to understand what is working, what is getting in the way, and what young people want more of.
- Narrow Definitions of Engagement: Defining engagement only as speaking up, sitting still, or participating in one specific way. Instead, recognize that engagement can look different across young people and create multiple ways for them to demonstrate interest, connection, and learning.
- Ignoring Barriers to Participation: Assuming a lack of participation means a lack of motivation. Instead, consider systemic and situational barriers such as transportation, competing responsibilities, belonging, confidence, accessibility, or whether the activity feels relevant to the young person.
How to Gamify a Lesson:
A Step-by-StepGuide: A practical guide to using game-based strategies to boost motivation, participation, and engagement while keeping learning goals at the center.
(Visited 2 times, 1 visits today)
