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.
I completely agree that motivation is a huge factor when it comes to how much effort a child is going to put into something. There are so many different genres of stories, including fables, folktales, myths, legends, modern literary tales, fantastic stories, science fiction, high fantasy, contemporary stories, historical stories, and more. After getting to know your students, I am sure as a teacher you will be able to find a genre that interests each one of your students. When I was younger, I did not mind reading, but I would not voluntarily do it by any means either. Then, my mom started buying me the books from the Goosebumps series. Once I got those, I could not do anything else but read. I remember reading one of the chapter books, they were usually around 120 pages, in only two days. I literally could not put them down. That just shows me how dedicated a student can become to reading if they have the type of book that is right for them.
ReplyDeleteAnother form of motivation that worked very well for me as a child was the Reading Pizza Hut sheets. Each time you would read for 15 minutes at home, you would get to fill in one of the spots on the Pizza Hut sheet. When each spot was filled we got a pizza coupon for a personal pizza from Pizza Hut. That year I probably read more books than I have ever read. I would sit in my room at night and read for an hour straight, just so I could fill in 4 spots to get closer to earning a personal pizza. My mom was very helpful with making this so motivational for me. She would act as excited about it as I would, and would always tell me how great of a job I was doing by reading so much. As soon as my sheet filled and I got my pizza coupon, we would immediately go to Pizza Hut so I could receive my reinforcement for completing my reading sheet. This type of reward’s value is very dependent on the parent, though. If a student gets the coupon but is never taken to Pizza Hut, they would probably stop because they would not be receiving the reward that they had earned.