Effort praise is a motivational strategy that can help apathetic and unmotivated students. It involves minimizing mistakes and praising a child's effort, as errors are part of learning. Teachers should focus on strengths over weaknesses and praise parts of tasks completed correctly. Additionally, teachers should make clear the connection between effort and achievement to students and define effort as strategic time spent using effective learning strategies rather than just trying harder without a plan.

1. Effort Praise: A Motivational Strategy
for Apathetic Students
From the Psychoeducation for Teachers Series

2.  Teachers and tutors know well that apathetic and
unmotivated children represent a problem of almost
epidemic proportions in our classrooms, in particular,
at the highest-grade levels. The most important
question to answer is what a teacher, a tutor or a
parent can do to motivate a reluctant, apathetic,
and/or a helpless learner. This is no simple question
with an easy answer. One motivational strategy that
can help is the use of effort praise.

3. In a few words, this is how this strategy
works…
 Minimize the child’s mistakes and praise his effort.
Help the child understand that errors and mistakes
are part of the learning process, and they are
necessary so that learning can take place. It is
important that adults pay attention to small changes,
so that we can praise those first signs that indicate
movement toward the child’s goal (for instance,
when we see the child focused and completing the
task).

4. Some examples of effort praise are…
 Your math is improving every day.
 I’m really glad that you _____.
 You are really concentrating today.
 The important thing is that you tried your best.
 I admire how much effort you put on this essay.
 This is the neatest job I have seen you doing.
 I love seeing you doing your class work.

5.  Focus on strengths and assets rather than on
weaknesses and errors. We can praise the part of
the task that the child has already gotten right,
minimize errors, and then we tell the child what she
needs to do (the steps and strategies) to complete
her task successfully.

6. Additional Guidelines
 Make sure the child clearly sees the connection
between his own effort and school success. Children
who understand this important effort-achievement
connection are more likely to respond to difficult
tasks and failure with less stress, less frustration and
more positive expectations about the outcome of the
event.

7.  Make sure that you define effort correctly, telling the
child that effort is spending effective and strategic
time on the learning task. Just trying harder or
wasting time doing random activities that are not
working is not effective effort. Effective and strategic
effort focuses on using learning strategies and in
applying procedures, that is, trying hard in a
particular way is what leads to success. When the
strategy or procedure that the child is using is not
working, we tell him or her to try a different strategy
or procedure. Teaching children to make strategic
effort attributions helps them see failure and
academic difficulties as problem solving situations in
which the search for a better strategy to use
becomes the focus.

8.  When we train an apathetic, unmotivated, and/or
helpless student in how to use strategic effort
attributions, we can weaken the negative perception
that lack of ability is what causes failure (e.g. “I’m
dumb! I’ll never learn this!”); most learning problems
are rooted in either children not using learning
strategies, or applying an inefficient learning strategy
for the specific skill that they are learning. The child
simply needs to find a better learning strategy to
solve that particular problem.

9.  Teach the child to see academic errors and mistakes
as her cue to change the learning strategy she is
currently using.
 Explicitly tell and show the child how to manage
failure and setbacks in a constructive and strategic
way, for example, you can say, “This is not working.
What is another way that you can do this?”
Alternatively, say, “What is another strategy that you
can use?”

10. Child guidance, an essential skill for
teachers and school counselors
 OUR FACEBOOK PAGES
AND GROUPS
 PSYCHOEDUCATION FOR
TEACHERS (Page)
 https://www.facebook.com/p
sychoeducationalteacher
 FREE OR CHEAP
TEACHING RESOURCES
(Page)
 https://www.facebook.com/fr
eeresourcesforteachers/
 WE TEACH THE WORLD
(Group)
 https://facebook.com/groups
/222247571474300
 BOOKS IN CHILD
GUIDANCE
 THE
PSYCHOEDUCATIONAL
TEACHER
 https://www.amazon.com/aut
hor/thepsychoeducationaltea
cher/