Reward Success, Use Failure
Let students choose their rewards: Create a list of acceptable rewards for excellent performance, either for individual students or the class as a whole, and let your students communally decide how they want to be rewarded. This will help make sure that the reward is an actual incentive, rather than just something you’ve pushed on them that doesn't motivate them to work harder.
Don’t see failure, see opportunity: When a student has made a mistake, don’t portray it that way. Don’t see it as a failure and don’t let them see it as a failure. Show them that it is a learning experience, a way for them to see how incorrect results are achieved. Let them try again and gently show them how to do it correctly. Remember, don’t say “wrong”. Say “close” or “good try”. Remember that a skill learned through trial and error will be much stronger than one which a student may simply get right on accident or through means they don’t fully understand.
Try community rewards: Traditional learning environments tend to create a system where under-performing students are jealous of those who don’t struggle (the stigmatizing of nerds, as it were). You want to create an environment in which students want to work as a united whole and which does not stigmatize success. This will make your students much more functional adults and prepare them for real world work environments. Do this by introducing community rewards, in which the success of individual students benefit the class as a whole.
For example, create a system in which for each student that scores perfectly on a test, everyone is rewarded. You can give everyone a few points of extra credit or poll the students to find out if they’d prefer a different reward. This encourages them to work together to achieve better results and endears higher performing students to their peers.
Meet Emotional Needs
Make them feel unique and needed: Acknowledge and appreciate each student individually, for the qualities which make them unique and wonderful human beings. Encourage those qualities. You should also make each student feel like they have something to offer and contribute. This will raise their confidence and help them to find their proper path in life.
Recognize their efforts: Even if students make only occasional, small efforts, those efforts need to be acknowledged and appreciated. Tell them when they’ve done a good job, individually, and mean it. Don’t be patronizing, be appreciative. If they’ve worked particularly hard, reward them. A student who’s managed to raise their grade from a D to a B+, for example, may have earned the right to pump their grade to an A with “extra credit” for the magnificent amount of work that would have been required to accomplish such a feat.
Give respect: It is extremely important to respect your students. It doesn’t matter if they’re graduate students working on a doctoral thesis or kindergartners: treat them like intelligent, capable human beings. Respect that they have ideas, emotions, and lives that extend beyond your classroom. Treat them with dignity and they will extend the same to you.
