FORMING COGNITIVE MOTIVATION OF PRIMARY SCHOOL STUDENTS IN EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES

Abstract

The main task of school education in Ukraine is the orientation at humanization and democratization of the whole educational process at school. Social changes define new priorities of education and upbringing, requiring the development of ambitious, self-motivated individuals, capable of rational creative work, bringing new ideas in all spheres of life. Therefore, an important task of modern education is the development critical thinking in school students. Primary school age is considered as the early formation of learning motivation. A modern school teacher faces an important task of finding new ways of forming positive motivation in children to implement the educational activity. The success and efficiency of the development and formation of primary school students' cognitive motivation depend on the forms and methods of the educational process organization. In this regard modern teaching technologies, interactive teaching methods are of an extreme significance. One of the most effective methods of forming informative motivation in primary school students is the development of critical thinking, which enhances their cognitive activity, teaches to build their thoughts logically, etc. In order to assess the impact of the strategies of critical thinking on primary school students' cognitive motivation an experiment involving 57 children who study at the 2nd grades of Kremenchuk specialized boarding school #21 has been conducted. The semester-long investigation has been carried out during the extracurricular time, which allowed moving away from the rigid structure of a lesson, discussing moral and ethical issues. The following methods have been used for the activation of critical thinking in primary school students: brainstorming, "Associative bush", foresight (by name, a picture, a fragment of a film), a composition of prediction tables, controlled reading, a preliminary assessment of one's own knowledge on the topic, drafting introspection tables. The experiment has proven the positive impact of critical thinking development on the formation of children's cognitive motivation. As a result children have become more interested in the process of cognitive activity and succeeded in it.