7 Engaging Ways To Motivate Students After Winter Break

Coming back from any substantial break can be challenging for many students, but winter break is the hardest. For most schools, this one is the longest outside of the three-month summer vacation. Plus, it’s right in the middle of the school year. While that’s great in the sense that students get to rest before starting the second half of the year, it makes getting back into the groove of things difficult.

That means it’s up to teachers to find engaging ways to help motivate their students after winter break. While all students are truly unique and respond differently to various techniques, we think we’ve found some general ones that should help inspire the majority of your class.

Encourage Self-Evaluation

Let’s go over self-evaluation for your students for our first tip. Typically, it’s best to implement it before break if possible. If not, you can still do so afterward—it just might be a little harder to get students to evaluate their performance from the previous semester. Whether or not your students get to see their grades before break, they likely have an idea of how well they did in your class throughout the year. Take the time to ask them how they feel about the first half of the year.

If your students received good grades and are happy with their progress, there’s not much you can do. However, if they weren’t receiving the best grades or didn’t like where they ended up, you can give them tips on how to self-evaluate themselves over break. Don’t make it feel like homework, though; instead, ask them to figure out where they’d like to improve and how they’d like to work on that. Then, they’ll feel more motivated to do so when they get back.

Of course, you can use the winter break to evaluate your own progress as well. Teachers know that there’s always room for improvement in the way they present materials, so take this time to reflect on yourself as well. If you come back refreshed from your own self-evaluation, your students will take notice.

Ease Back Into Learning

One big mistake a lot of teachers make after winter break is trying to hop right back into the materials. Even though you don’t want to waste a lot of time, it’s best to ease back into things—especially if you have a jam-packed semester.

Your students might be more eager to learn if they’re not forced back into it on the first day with a difficult lesson. Start with something that’s a bit more straightforward. Better yet, take the first day off and do some other activities.

Give Time To Socialize

If you’re not sure what to do on your first day back after break, a good way to start is by giving your students time to socialize with each other. While some of them might have hung out with each other during break, not all of them have. That means there are new stories to tell and cool gifts to show off.

Setting aside about 15 minutes to let everyone catch back up is something your students would really appreciate. If you want to be involved during this time, you can make it a class activity. Let everyone share how their winter break went and find ways to make it fun. This is a great way to get everyone engaged right away since it has nothing to do with school.

Go Over Goals and Objectives

Of course, you should spend some time being productive even if you decide not to teach any new materials during everyone’s first day back. That’s why you should consider taking this time to review your goals for the new semester. Take this time to go over each of the subjects you’ll cover throughout the rest of the year. If students have an idea of where things are headed, they might feel more inspired to get through the difficult stuff.

Also, let your students know what you’ll expect from them during the next semester. This can range from behavioral objectives to more academic-based ones. Whatever you expect from your students, telling them now will help them follow them more closely as the year progresses, making initial engagement a bit easier.

Review Pertinent Material

While some classes might not need to have students remember things from the previous semester, others do. Math and science are the biggest subjects in which this is true. If a student struggled with a lesson covered before break, not remembering it very well after will hurt their ability to learn the new materials.

Taking a day or two after winter break to review the important topics covered during the first semester could be just the thing your students need to reengage. This tactic can even help those who did well the previous semester since it will get them back into the mindset of the materials. This tip for motivating students after winter break can be very helpful for every student in your class.

Implement New Strategies

Since winter break is a great time for teachers to reevaluate themselves. Once you start teaching again, this will be the time to put the things you learned about yourself into practice. For example, if you think your teaching style might have been a little dry, you should try to find ways to liven it up. You could spend less time reading directly from the book and more time explaining concepts to students in a way that better relates to them.

You can also mix up the assignments you give to your students. If you typically give out multiple essays for homework, try changing it up by assigning a presentation-based project or something students can work on as a group. This will help keep students more engaged since they won’t have to do work that feels monotonous, which will also help drive future interest.

Find Unique Ways To Introduce New Concepts

Even if you change up your teaching style, the normal teaching process can become stale, especially once your students enter a new semester. That’s why finding unique ways to introduce new concepts might be more engaging instead of simply diving into the next chapter.

Obviously, you can go to places like online forums and Pinterest to find fun ideas that other teachers have used in their classes to drive student interest, but sometimes the best solution is to have a new face do this. The best way to do this is to invite someone who can run an engaging school assembly to show your students fun and unique ways to experience certain topics.

If you would like to hire a group that can run a science assembly for your school, you’ve come to the right place. Our team of experts has been doing these types of assemblies for schools for quite a while now. We know starting out your second semester with a bang is important, and we’ll be sure to deliver.