How To Make Every Student Feel Valued: 15 Ways

Elementary school students are just like the rest of us: they also want to feel valued by others, including their classmates and teachers. However, how do teachers make their students feel as such?

You can make elementary students feel valued by getting to know them inside and outside the classroom, focusing on their strengths, and celebrating their work. You can also make them feel special by letting them help you with simple tasks and checking in with them to see how they are doing.

Motivating elementary students and keeping them feeling valued can be daunting. Still, there are simple steps that you can take to ensure they are valued and appreciated. This article will give elementary teachers tips to make their students feel valued.

Table of Contents

1. Get To Know Your Students

To make these young students feel valued, you must get to know them in person. It may be easy to remember them if you handle a single class in one academic year (primarily if you handle pupils from kindergarten to the second grade). However, it could be challenging if you’re running several classes and have a weakness in remembering names or faces.

At the opening of the school year, you can ask your students to introduce themselves in front of everyone so others can also know them. You can also ask them to give a little more information about themselves to know their future career aspirations, interests, likes, or dislikes.

Other methods that you can use to know your students better include:

Have a one-on-one discussion with your students at least once a week to discuss anything the student wishes to discuss with you.
Observe your student’s activities and manners inside the classroom.
Ask for feedback from your student’s parents to get to know them better.

Have lunch together with your students.

2. Make the Classroom Welcoming and Warm

Everyone wants their environment to be welcoming, even young children. Some students may feel uncomfortable about entering the classroom if it is their first time attending school.

So teachers must make an effort to make the classroom more welcoming for them and make them feel that they’re special. You can let the students choose where they want to sit or give them a small gift that welcomes them into your class.

3. “Disregard” Any Negative Information About Your Students

Sometimes, teachers share information about the students they handled in the past, including any negative behavior they have seen, with their next teacher. This information will give the next teacher a preconceived idea that the student may display similar behavior in their classroom. It may result in a strained relationship even if they haven’t met the student.

Although you may not disregard those comments outright—you will favor your students if you give them a chance to prove themselves. Allowing your student leeway will also help them feel valued because their new teacher did not judge them for past actions.

4. Greet Them As They Enter the Room in the Morning

Greeting your students a good morning and greeting them by their names every school day doesn’t take much time and effort, but it means a lot to them.

A simple greeting can help build a positive relationship between teachers and their students. It can even help young children feel valued because the teacher knows their names.

Furthermore, a 2007 study found that teachers who greeted students increased their on-task behavior by 27%. Researchers based the study on students with behavioral problems, and the evidence suggests that greeting a student by name with a positive affirmation increased student engagement substantially.

5. See the Students’ Strengths First, Before Their Weaknesses

It is essential to make your students know about their strengths and positive characteristics before their challenges. This attention will make them feel valued by their teacher and motivate them to work on their weaknesses.

Some students will struggle with hearing negative comments, which can affect a young child’s self-esteem. It takes great effort to keep those comments out of their minds. You don’t have to announce good traits to everyone all the time. A word with them in private, telling their positive traits, can tremendously help boost their self-confidence.

Studies show that midbrain dopamine neurons are critical for positive motivation. Offering your students positive affirmation will increase student motivation and engagement in your classroom.

6. Remind Parents of Their Children’s Strengths

As you see your student’s strengths and positive characteristics, you must also remind their parents about this. It’s always good to provide parents with positive feedback and beautiful things they don’t usually see about their children.

Parents are frequently called to the school to discuss something negative, whether lagging behind everyone or violating the school’s rules and regulations. However, teachers often don’t inform parents of positive behaviors and activities.

You can opt to call their parents and tell them about the positive traits you see in your student or that they performed exceptionally well during the class activity.

Feedback like this also fosters trust between parents and the teacher to ensure the child receives the proper support needed for their education.

Studies show a direct correlation between parental support and students’ emotional and psychological well-being. By engaging parents positively, the elementary teacher can improve their student’s feelings of self-worth.

7. Build Relationships Outside the Classroom

Teachers can make their students feel valued by building relationships outside the classroom. It can take 15 minutes to watch their students at events like a baseball game or a ballet performance.

Being present at these events, even for a short time, will show that teachers care about their students, and the students will feel valued and motivated to do their best in whatever they do.

If you cannot make it to these events, you can ask your students the next day how it went. It will show your students how much you care about them outside school.

Studies show that positive socialization releases oxytocin which stimulates the reward centers of our brain. By interacting with your students in positive experiences, you create a closer bond which facilitates the learning process.

8. Rephrase Your Student’s Wrong Answers

Teachers can rephrase the answer of a student that was wrong instead of saying it’s incorrect at the onset. This way, the students will not feel humiliated or embarrassed because they gave the wrong answer in front of everyone. It also shows your students that you are listening to them.

Recitations are already stressful for young students because they are afraid of giving a wrong answer that everyone can hear. Here are some tips for teachers that they can adopt to help their students in case they provide an incorrect answer during a class discussion or activity:

Never say “no” or “wrong” after the student provided an incorrect answer. Doing so will only discourage students, not just the ones who got it wrong, from participating in succeeding class activities.
Facilitate the discussion even if the students’ answers throw the subject off-track. You must encourage everyone in the classroom to share their thoughts and participate in the activity.

Ask factual or recall questions to check if they are listening and understand the lesson. You may also opt to check their understanding by asking open-ended questions.
Provide feedback on the wrong answer with empathy. If the student provided the correct answer but used another method to derive it, you must recognize that they are technically accurate but review the process you discussed. If it was wrong, acknowledge their effort and then explain the answer in a manner that will not make them feel humiliated.
Thank the students for their effort to answer your questions, even if they got them wrong. A simple “thank you” can mean a lot to a student.

9. Showcase Your Students’ Work

If you want your students to feel valued, show their work to everyone. You can post them on a wall inside your classroom. You can also ask your students to show their work to everyone and share their thoughts about their work in a class activity.

You can also share your student’s work with their parents or guardians through email or written notes. Highlighting excellent work will stimulate your students to work harder and increase their feelings of self-esteem.

10. Check In With Your Students

If you notice a student is having a bad day or not acting like their usual self, check in to know if they’re okay or struggling with something. This attention lets them know that you see them and they can feel safe with you. This process will also help you understand your student further to identify the proper support your student may need from you.

It would mean something to them even if they don’t share anything with you. The next time you check in with them, they might open up to you and share their thoughts now that you have built that trust.

To provide you with more insight and tips about checking in with your students, here’s a YouTube video from Elizabeth of The Inspired Classroom:

11. Let Them Play a Role in Helping You

Your students will feel valued if you give them a role in assisting you for the day. It could be as simple as distributing papers, wiping the whiteboard, or any simple tasks they can help you with during the day.

It’s not only about giving your students responsibility, but it makes them feel special as their teacher entrusted something for them to do.

One teacher has found this trick by assigning a PA of the day where students take their turns each day by helping her do the work where she needs help for the entire duration.

12. Dedicate a Lesson Where Students Can Appreciate One Another

Everyone wants to be appreciated and receive compliments, even young children.

As a teacher, you can do that by reserving a class day where the students can give compliments to show their appreciation to one another. You can provide them with a piece of paper where they can write the name of the person they wish to compliment and why they’re doing so.

Studies suggest that giving and receiving compliments can increase a person’s sense of well-being and life satisfaction. Furthermore, they found that compliments about a person’s character and personality were the most meaningful to the recipient.

13. Give Students a Clue About the Next Lesson

As a teacher, you will always notice someone who lacks self-confidence or self-esteem in participating in your class or struggles with understanding the lesson. You can help that student by giving them clues about the next subject of study.

One teacher has suggested this after seeing this practice from another school. The teacher gave the pupil lacking confidence at school a little card as they left, providing a clue about their next lesson and encouraging him to study it.

That gesture will undoubtedly boost the pupil’s confidence, and that student will probably feel special because of the individual attention. Sometimes, a little help can go a long way for them to feel valued.

14. Reward Students for Their Great Work or Good Behavior

Another way to make your students feel valued is by rewarding them for their excellent work or exhibiting good behavior inside the classroom. Rewards can increase their motivation to do school work or participate in in-person classroom activities. It also boosts your students’ self-esteem.

Rewards do not have to be material in nature. It could be an intangible privilege like having a homework pass where a student can opt not to do homework for a particular subject for exhibiting good behavior or doing exceptional school work. Another firm favorite with students is allowing them additional screen time on their devices.

BookWidgets has provided tips on setting up a reward system in your classroom and making it work:

Establish achievable or measurable class goals with your students. You must also define when the students receive the reward.

You must explain to your students why you’re giving a reward to someone.
Allow your students to take part in choosing their reward.
It would be best if you gave the reward as soon as you encountered the intended behavior.

Raise the expectations over time and lessen the rewards to be given.
Randomly give rewards so they will stay motivated to receive them and not expect them as a matter of course.

15. Reprimand the Student in Private

Some students will always violate the school rules or fail to follow your instructions. Of course, nobody wants to be called out in public for their inappropriate behavior, even young students.

It’s best to confront the erring student privately, where you can discipline the student while retaining their dignity. Being humiliated in front of the class can cause considerable anxiety and affect students’ learning ability. The student might even feel valued because you treat them respectfully despite his actions.

Final Thoughts

Like everyone else, young elementary students yearn to feel valued. Teachers should make an effort to make their elementary students feel unique and valued as a person, whether inside the classroom or outside the school.

There are many ways to make our students feel valued. Some do not require significant time and effort, like a simple greeting first thing in the morning. These simple efforts go a long way to boost your students’ confidence and morale, resulting in better academic performance.