Motivation to work in D&T

I have been enjoying the teaching and I believe the students in 4NA D&T class which I am covering for Simon has been enjoying the lesson too. So far their progress has been smooth. They have progressed from brainstorming the theme "Movement" and organising the brainstormed items into a mindmap. Although we do not advocate a certain number to the quantity of problem situations they should find out from the mindmap, it has still been easier for me to put a minimum of 15 problem situations revolving around the theme. Out of the 15, the pupils has been instructed to search out 5 real authentic problems and snapshot those problem situations, print out and paste into the journal in place of the problem sketch. This was meant to train them to be think 'designerly', ie like a designer/ engineer snapping problems whenever problem crop up.

All the 15 pupils have been up to task and enjoying the lessons motivated by going out on short Learning Journeys and also simple project like this. This is a simple Aluminium Key Tag that can be completed in 1.5 hours. If polished properly, it can look like stainless steel.

Here you see some pupils starting to do the key tags because they have finished their assigned tasks at home while some are still catching up in their journal homework so as to be able to start with this interesting practical projects.
As D&T pupils, their motivation are to be able to do practical hands on work, so the design journal tasks can be slow at times. So I have told them that if they complete design journal homework, they can have opportunity to do up the hands on practical task. What's more, they have not manage this material before, hence, it will also give them additional options in terms of materials when they come to choosing materials for their artefact.

And this is motivation... motivating pupils to do what they may not naturally like by carrot of what they do like.. as a result motivating to teacher too.