Motivating teenagers

Why are teenagers so unmotivated all the time? What activities can we do to engange them in class? New discoveries in neuroscience can provide us with a biological explanation for this.
Brain function is different in adolescence than in adulthood (25 years). The Prefrontal cortex continues to mature into the 20s, making decision-making generally more effortful and difficult. Adolescents operate more from the reflexive, instinctive, amygdalar part of brain, leading to impulsivity.
They also have less activity in the nucleus accumbens (a region of the frontal cortex) which leads to motivational deficit. This means that adolescents are drawn to high-excitement and low-effort experiences, or both. Long-term planning suffers and risk-taking or "laziness" are very common.

Teenagers can be very demanding and critical but once they are motivated they can show a lot of creativity and imagination in class so the question is how we can motivate them and get the most of each of them....
Below you will find some activities that really worked in my class and I hope they will be useful and enganging for your students.

Warming up - First Impressions are really important to get students in the perfect mood to motivate them. The beginning of the class is a key moment to engage your group of teens in the lesson.

• Cues! It's students' time to be detectives! Hide in the class five cues  that will help them find out what the lesson will be about. To make this activity more engaging and fun write the cues in QR code! What I always use is the QR Code Generator: www.goqr.me to create the cues, I paste the cues on the classroom walls and then they  have to use their cell phones to decipher the codes. They have to install a programme to read the codes, it's free and easy to download. 
• Put a complex picture on the board related to the lesson, get them into groups to discuss what they think the lesson is going to be about and play some music in the background. When the music stops they share their ideas with the whole class.
• Jigsaw Puzzle: if your students have computers you can give them a jigsaw puzzle to introduce a new unit. Here's the webpage I use to create my puzzles.: http://www.jigsawplanet.com
• Pass the bomb: Get a ball and play some music, when the music stops, the student with the ball answers a question from the previous class. This is a great idea for revision that can be used at the beginning of the class or at the end as a round up.

Lesson Ideas

• Google Earth Tour: For this activity you will need computers and the google earth programme installed in the computers.  If you are dealing with places, countries, cities, etc. you can get learners in pairs to carry out an expedition somewhere they would like to go. Then, they report back what they have investigated about the place they visited. 
• Speed dating: If you want to practise speaking  you can sit your students in two rows of chairs facing each other. Call out the first theme and give students two minutes to talk about the topic. When the time is over one side of the class remains seated while the other side moves to the next chair. 
• Connecting chain: This activity is used to revise / practise linking words. The teacher makes a statement and adds a linking word, then throws the ball to a student who has to finish and end the statement with a connective word and so on....
• Survivors: Tell your students that they are flying as passengers on a jumbo jet over the Pacific. By chance a war takes place during their flight forcing the captain to land close to a small island. Passangers learn that they are about to become the last remaining survivors on the planet. The job of each group is to decide what sort of society they can create on the island. *Questions that may guide them through the task: what needs to be arranged / done immediately? How will tasks be arranged? How will decisions be made? Who will be the leader? What will they eat? How? How will children be looked after? How will family life be sorted? What happens to rule breakers? Stand back and let your students debate.

Rounding up

• Box and Cox: This activity is an unthreatening way of assessing to what extent learners have understood what you have taught. Ask students to write down a question that relate to something they do not understand. Make sure these are anonymous and ask them to put these into a box. You can quickly go through any questions and clarify issues to the class that they may not have understood.
• Don't mention it! Students draw from a bag/box a word they have learnt in class. They have to attempt to describe that word without using the word itself. 
• Spot the mistake: Get students in pairs. The teacher writes a sentence, question, with a grammar mistake on the board and students must find it and correct it. You can also write grammaticaly correct statements and students decide if the sentence is right or wrong.
• Mind maps: I am a fan of mind maps as they are an excellent tool to revise concepts and consolidate topics. The use of mindmaps can be used at the end term or the end of a unit, Ask learners for key ideas from the last lesson/current unit/s and tell them they have to create a mind map. Then, they share them with the rest of the class.
• Who wants to be a millionaire? Prepare 10 questions for revision . Pick one learner to be the contestant and one to be the host, Like the television show,give learners three ‘lifelines’, phone a friend (ask someone in class) or askt he audience (everyone in the class writes an answer on a blank sheet of pape and holds it up). Swap the contestant and host.

It is a fact that motivating teens can be a really difficult task to achieve but it can also be one of the most rewarding experiences you may ever had. These were just some ideas that you can implement in class , try them out and see what happenes. I will be posting more activities soon. Stay tuned!

The Mindful teacher

A mindful teacher in the classroom is essential if you want a class which flows naturally without disruptive behaviour and lack of attention.
Humans are not born with completely developed brains and nervous systems. Neuroscience tells us that children as well as teens cannot regulate themselves till they are in their 20s. Their pre frontal cortex complete developing by more or less the age of 21 so their ability to downshift and regulate their emotions is incomplete until their adults.

Current scientific findings are clear that in order to regulate emotions, human beings are dependent on mature brains to initially assist in the microregulation of their physical and emotional world. Ideally, this interactive regulation transitions back and forth over the childhood and adolescence until the person is largely selfregulation. However, at stressful times, it is necessary and appropriate to seek interactive regulation from stable others. - Arlene Montgomery, Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin

This is the reason why the role of an adult is so important in youth. The care-giver acts as the ventral vagal (soothing) system until their  nervous system can begin to regulate itself.

So the questions is, when we enter the class, are we present, attuned, and empathic? Or are we feeling sad, stressed out, tired, dissociated or anxious? what are we unconsciously transmitting to our students? Pupils  literally respond to the state of our system.

• Emotions are constantly being transmitted to each other. The teacher's internal state is going to be a determinate factor on weather students will be able to learn or not. 
• Mirror neurons: Human beings imitate other people's behaviours as a way to communicate with one another. 

The following characteristics of a mindful teacher will help educators get the best from their students.

• PRESENCE; A mindful teacher is totally enganged in what is happening at the moment. Children and teenagers notice unconsciously when the teacher is not in the "here and now".
• STABILITY AND SOLIDITY is this idea that the adult is transparent, empty, stable and grounded. Be soft and flexible but at the same time unshakable. You can show these qualities through your gestures and posture. The weight of your body ground completely through the feet while having the head and spine naturally lengthening upward. Take the class as your spacial territory and imagine your awareness covering the entire room inviting students to join your class. Embody solidity and show it. 
• SPEECH. Pay attention to the quality of your voice. Intonation , rhythm and stress change as you become more present. Speaking with awareness creates a relaxed power. 
• AUTHENTICITY: Being authentic is finding your own style and voice. Don't try to be somebody else, humans can easily sense when you are lying , just be you!

Taking these aspects into account will help you cope with a disregulated class and catch your students' attention. The role of the teacher, as I mentioned before,  becomes fundamental as it is mainly a model for self regulation and self control. 

More games in the classroom

The importance of playing in the classroom

The reason why incorporating games in our daily lessons is so important is because during games the control of learning is transfered from the teacher to the students. The protagonist is the student as his or her unique way of learning is the one that is developed.Another reason is that playing and exploration trigger the secretion of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, a substance that is essential for the growth of cells.What's more, imagination and social play support the development of attention, self control and cooperative learning skills.
In a previous post I mention some of the games I use in my classroom. Today, I'd like to share with you more games that can be beneficial to your students' learning and at the same time you can have a lot of fun! 
1. Line up according to....The game involves groups of students lining up in order, depending on the criteria you choose, whether it's their birthday, height or any number of other options. Explain that they must line up in order using only English to communicate with each other, teams caught cheating will be disqualified from that round. When a team finishes, the person at the front of the line puts their hand up and you walk down the line checking that they are  in the right order.Examples of the teacher's instructions: Line up according to.... your age,  the day they were born, the time you woke up this morning, the  number of brothers and sisters, the number of pets, etc.
2. Car Race: Arrange flash cards in a long line with a starting and a finishing point. The first student throws the dice and moves his/her counter. The student must say the word on the flashcard he/she lands on. If the student makes a mistake, he/she goes back to the his/her previuos place. 
3. Charades: the class can be divided into any number of teams depending on the amount of students the teacher has. The teacher whispers a word to the students who are going to mime the word for their teams. The team who first guesses the word is the winner.
4. Do what I say: The teacher  gives commands to the class to revise vocabulary. For instance....touch something blue....or touch your head, sit down, stand up....This typical TPR activity is a great excercise to charge batteries and get students in the right mood.
5. Musical Chairs: Line up the chairs and place a flashcard on each one. Play some music and have the students walk, hop, jump around the chairs. When the music stops, the students should sit down on a chair and shout out their flash cards. You can also remove a chair and make the student without a chair sit out until the next round. 

6. Get the word now!: Divide students into groups. Assign to each member of the group a number. Place in the middle of the classroom flashcards with the linguistic items you want to revise. The teacher says a number and one of the words in the flashcards. The students with the number assigned by the teacher are the ones who are going to run to the flashcards and get the one the teacher said. The first one to get it gets a point for his/her team.