Perhaps for all students, we can begin to look at time used for academics and learning.  I feel in school,  many teachers lose the ability to relate to young children in terms of attention span, which is very short for them, and also the push for work as seen by adults when children that age need more support, care, humor, and softer guidance.

For this I see only about 15 to 20 minutes of time for some academic area followed by some other fun stuff.  Also when we teach children that age we need to use an entirely different language, more humor, more support, more ease.  There are things we can do as adults like helping students relax when reading and writing at that age.  Too many times we simply set tasks before them without understanding the proper task analysis or steps that need to be taught.  

1.  For reading we need to lightly and with humor go over the sounds slowly with fun and show them how to use the sounds to learn new words in print they already know from their social vocabulary. We need to help them visualize the material and see the words as pictures.  We need to make good use of reflection time or time to just read slowly and appreciate their reading.  Reading should not work at that age but a very enjoyable escape for them.  In time, that enjoyment will turn into valuable skills.  Just let them get their feet wet and enjoy the process.  Here we are talking about "long-term motivation to read, write, and perform other academics so more ease and support can help more so to nurture that long-term motivation.

2.  For writing, we need to slowly go over the way to write in manuscript.  You will note that when writing in print you can make beautiful print using "taught" circles and straight lines for different letters. This can be taught in a very easy fun way.  Also I find many teachers mistakenly put writing out there without teaching this. They may also forget to with ease or care reinforce those students for relaxing their grip on their pencils and not pressing down hard.  That in itself if not corrected and hurt motivation to write over time.

3. For math, we need to "use the number line for addition and subtraction".  When we do this and show students how the adding of
7 + 8 = 15, then those students upon learning that number line can then relate that knowledge to say, 17 + 8 and so on.  So just memorizing some facts sound good, but miss out on the visualization and ease of learning ahead.  Just learning facts will not help them learn those higher additions and subtractions.

All in all we need to change gears completely for younger students by slowing down, using more humor or ease, understand better steps they need to learn, and understanding and limiting instruction in view of much shorter reflection time.  For long-term motivation we need to start off easy, slow, and fun.  In time, children will develop more skills, more ease of independent learning, and more pace naturally with equal enjoyment