When I think about motivation, in regards to reading and writing, in my placement classroom, two students immediately stand out to me. The first student is a well rounded student, and seems to be highly motivated in all of the subjects that my CT teaches. In my classroom, as I've explained before, my CT relies heavily on silent reading, or as "Read to Self" as she calls it, in her classroom. During this time, this student is always sitting with a book reading quietly the entire time. This student is an advanced reader and she has moved from picture books to chapter books. This student is also very focused during writing time. She has many stories in her writing folder, and is a pretty good writer for being in first grade. I would say that she is one of the top writers in her classroom. I think that this student does well with these subjects because she knows that she is good at reading and writing, which motivates her to challenge herself and go further.
The other student that comes to mind is a student who struggles with reading and writing. This student is seen as the "Troublemaker" in the classroom, but is also a very sweet kid. When it is "Read to Self" time in the classroom, this student is often up and walking around the classroom, going to the restroom multiple times and is talking with other students. When I sit down with this student, he struggles with reading and often guesses because he thinks that if he gets the answer wrong enough times, that I will just tell him the word. This student also has difficulty with sounding out words, which also links to his writing. He still has a little trouble with identifying letters and their corresponding sounds, so when he tries to sound out words, he gives up easily. I can tell that he is not very motived toward either of these subjects because he has difficulty with them. I think that if my CT worked with this student one on one more frequently, he could be more motivated to try in these subjects, which will allow him to do better.
I think that motivation and success have a very close relationship. As you can see with the two students that I described, motivation is a huge part in achieving success. I know that I have learned about motivation in my other TE classes, but I find that this is sometimes very hard to implement in the classroom. Sometimes students just really aren't and don't want to have the motivation to work hard in certain subjects, even though they need to. But I hope that with more practice, I can find the right trigger to motivate certain students so that they can become better learners.
Heather,
ReplyDeleteYou provide a really interesting comparison of motivated and unmotivated students. I agree with you, there seems to be a tricky relationship between motivation and success, especially with reading. Often, it seems like students who are most successful in reading and writing are those who enjoy, or those who can pick it up easily. For me, I worry about the few students like you describe who don't enjoy reading and writing, and will do anything to get out of it. Not an easy dilemma for sure!
I agree that motivation and success are closely related to each other. However, I do think that if students were worked with individually in my and Heather's classroom, specifically the students like the unmotivated student that Heather described, their success rate would be much higher. It is frustrating to see our CT solely focus on literacy in the classroom, all day, every day. While these are crucial skills, especially for our first grade students, the students don't receive any help. They are told to either "Read to Self," which is quite simply sitting in their "reading space" for at least 30-45 minutes 3-4 times a day. For the unmotivated readers, aka, those who have absolutely no idea how to read and simply look at pictures over and over, constantly get in trouble for not reading, getting up out of their "reading space" and wandering around, which even moreso decreases their motivation. The same is true for writing, where the students are giving a "writing folder" with a pen and pieces of paper, and asked to "free-write" about "whatever they want" for 30-45 minutes twice a day. Those who have no idea how to "write" and simply draw pictures and letters (which IS writing, in my opinion, or at least what we learned in TE 301, just not as advanced of a writing technique or what we consider writing for advanced writers) get in trouble for doing so. Therefore, like during "Read to Self" time, these same struggling students get up and wander around the classroom because they are unmotivated and disengaged from the skills they are unable to do, and get in even more trouble than what they were in to begin with.
ReplyDeleteTo respond to Heather's concern, I do think that if we as teachers do a better job of working with students that are struggling with reading (such as pulling those students aside during reading and writing time and spending individual time with them periodically during the 30-45 minutes at least 5 times a day between reading and writing), the students might (or might not) become more motivated to learn, which in turn triggers their improved success.
My classroom is very different from Heather and Kaitlin’s classroom. Literacy in my classroom consists of my CT reading a story to the students on the carpet, and upon finishing the story giving each student the choice of reading a specific story from their Language Arts textbook and answering the questions that follow, reading books from their book box (Every student has their own box that is filled with different pictures books or chapter books that they can choose to read, and that is monitored by my CT), finishing their spelling, or writing, rather than just having the students partake in “Read to Self.” She makes suggestions to students on certain occasions as to what choice they should make, such as when a certain writing or spelling assignment is due, but for the most part the students have the choice of what they want to do. During literacy my CT either sits with a student and has them read to her and then they make a reading goal and the student places their goal on the literacy board, or my CT edits a student’s piece of writing with them. Based on the differences I see in my classroom, compared to Heather and Kaitlin’s when it comes to literacy I almost have to disagree with Heather’s statement that motivation and success have a very close relationship. It makes sense that success in literacy would provide a student with the motivation to read and write. However, the students in my class don’t seem to be motivated to read or write based on their success with these activities, it seems to be the student’s interest in the topics they are reading or writing about, or the student’s interest in school in general that helps the student to be motivated.
ReplyDeleteOne reason why I believe that motivation and success may not go hand in hand is that the most motivated reader in my third grade placement classroom is the student with the lowest reading level in the class. This young girl reads very, very slowly, she guesses on a lot of words rather than sounding them out, her peers become annoyed with when she reads out loud to the class, and her peers constantly try to correct her or read for her out loud, but she still loves to read and is the first student to raise her hand when I or my CT are looking for someone to read out loud. I think that this girl stays motivated to read because her book box is full of a wide variety of genres, including graphic novels and books that revolve around topics of her interest. I also think that she loves to write because she has many friends in the class and uses her relationships with her peers as writing topics.
The most unmotivated students in my placement classroom are three boys who are “too cool for school.” These boys always choose “book box” when they get a choice during literacy, but they are always sitting together and not reading. These boys never raise their hand when I or my CT are looking for a student to read out loud, and they actually get embarrassed when they have to read out loud. These boys are all great readers and writers, they are just very unmotivated to do anything literacy related, or really anything in the classroom at all. Their book boxes offer many choices and they can write about whatever they want they are just unmotivated to read and write I think because they think that they are “too cool for school.”
(Couldn't post my whole post, rest is here)
ReplyDeleteI agree with Heather in that it can be hard to motivate students in the subject area of literacy, especially when they are not having success with reading or writing, but also when they have success but just don’t care. Some students just want to give up, or don’t care about reading or writing but it is our job, as educators to help motivate students in literacy, as well as in all subject areas. I think that giving students a choice of what to do during literacy, using students interests in literacy, spending time listening to students read and helping them to make reading goals, and editing their writing with them are some great ways to help students become motivated in literacy. These ideas will not help all students, but it as long as we are continually trying to help unmotivated students become motivated towards literacy we are doing our job as educators.