I think that motivation is a very
important thing for a student to have for them to become good readers, but it’s
important for teachers to differentiate between intrinsic and extrinsic
motivation like it says in the book.
Extrinsic motivation is when people want to do something for the sake of
something else such as a reward, whereas intrinsic motivation is when someone
wants to do something for the sake of itself. I know that when I was young I wasn’t a very
good reader, and I think the reason was because I wasn’t given books to read
that interested me. I know that it is important for students to read many
genres of books for the purpose of enrichment, but reading science fiction or
reading non-fiction should be the same as far as learning to read with
fluency. I know that some teachers like
to motivate students to read by giving out rewards such as pencils or candy,
and the rewards did get me to read, but I wasn’t reading because I enjoyed
reading, and when the reward went away I stopped reading books for fun.
As far as students in the class are
concerned, I think it is important for teachers to do what they can to motivate
students to be interested in learning about the subjects that teachers want to
teach their students. There was a math
class that I was observing where the teacher built up the tension saying, “I
know your all not going to like this but… in today’s class were going to be
doing… FRACTIONS!!!” Then the students predictably said, “OH NO!!!” I think
that if a teacher has a positive attitude towards the subject their teaching,
then the students will be more receptive to learning.
