The following answers, chosen from 113 filled in questionnaires, are the most common or significant.

I enjoy:
Practical, hands-on lessons
Being directly involved in the task
Creative, original activities
Team work
Using equipment like scissors, rulers, colours, paperboard… in mathematics, everyday or lab materials in science
Using ICT, both in Math and Science
Going out, working open-air, doing school trips
Studying real world connected topics
Teaching peers, youngest children or generally someone who doesn’t know the topic
Understanding, interpreting things
Doing activities with external experts

Motivation is:
To know the goals and the meaning of what I’m doing or I’m going to do, to understand the importance of my task
Something that makes me enjoy studying
To feel curiosity
To cope with the difficulties, i.e. a new mathematical problem, a scientific experiment, in order to solve them
What motivates me?
Words of encouragement
Rewards like good marks
Sometimes a bad mark challenge me to work
Team work
I don’t need to be motivated, I enjoy studying in itself, because I like broadening my knowledge. It’s demanding, but I know that in this way I’m building my future.
To be understood by my teachers
To be interested in the task, to enjoy it, in this way the task becomes easy
To learn a new thing
To work less at home and more at school.
What activities have motivated you?
Open-air work, school trips (to a Science Centre, a natural environment)
Lab activities in Science and Mathematics, both with everyday materials and ICT
Lessons given to younger children
What activities have not motivated you?
When I’m asked to do nothing but listen the teacher
When I hear the same things repeated and repeated…

Challenge is…
To be directly, personally involved in a task
To build a concrete object, such as a poster, an electrical circuit…
To explain, to communicate my work
To be engaged in a difficult task
To be engaged in a original task
To interpret a phenomenon, to discover a rule
To have to fight for a good mark
To compete with other group to demonstrate that we are the best
Challenge is not
A theoretical lesson, where the teacher talks and talks…

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Who/what support me:
Materials and equipment that help me better understand.
To see what I’m learning represented by means of real models, graphs, schemes
My friends, my teachers, my parents
Me and my will to do
New tasks
Hands-on activities
Extra lessons
To be asked to solve tasks that I can cope with.
To be motivated

What topics you would like know more about:
Environment, animals
Human body, health and sex education
Wide range of physical, chemical and biological topics
Computer science
What topics are useful in your everyday life?
The same topics mentioned above, and more:
Arithmetic (calculations, percentages …)
Mathematics as means of reasoning

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I do a cooperative work when:
I exchange ideas and opinions inside the group, during a scientific experience
When we work in pair or in a group during the Mathematics lessons and I help my classmates by teaching them what they have not understand; at the same time I receive help from them; cooperation between friends is very important for learning.
Cooperation between teachers may be interesting because:
We could learn a topic from different points of view.