This week’s reading involved how to motivate our students’
in reading. This is something I
have been working very hard on especially since my students are getting ready
for first grade and we are hard at work on the Common Core Standards
(CCS). The article by Linda
Gambrell gave some great ideas on how to intrinsically (internally needs or
feelings) motivate students to read.
Here are just a few ideas:
- Access
to a range of reading materials
- Opportunities
for students to choose what they read
- Adequate
time for students to engage in sustained reading
- Opportunities
for success with challenging texts
- Opportunities
for social interactions about text
I use many of these ideas regularly in my classroom. The hard part is how to bring it down
to the level of many of my students, because often times those who can’t read
the words are often reading the pictures and telling the story that way. Often times this turns into playing,
this is a struggle in my classroom.
They have the access to a wide range of reading materials, I guess they
just need more modeling of what reading should look like, even though they get
that often for me, they need to see more modeling of silent reading or reading
with a partner.
One thing I am very excited about is the introduction of challenging
texts. I am working with the team
for my district to help write the assessments/tasks/units etc for common
core. In our meeting yesterday we
were talking about introducing challenging texts. We need to be incorporating them to the whole group so that
those higher-level learners have the access and hopefully those average and
students who struggle will be challenged as well. In looking at text exemplars for the CCS (http://instruction.ers.tcoe.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Appendix_B.pdf)
it lists for K-1 several books I was surprised to see. The book Little House in the Big
Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder is listed as
a 3rd grade text on Amazon, but according to the new standards
should be a K-1 read aloud now. I
loved those books and read them several times when I was little; I now plan to
bring them in for my students.
This morning I brought in several different books for my
students. I showed them the books
I was reading for this class. They
were very excited, they kept saying that when they got older if they continued
to learn they would be able to go to school and read like me. I also showed them how I read for fun
on my IPad. At first they were
confused about reading for fun, then I related one of our picture books that
was make believe to one of my fiction books. We also talked about reading nonfiction books when you
wanted to read to learn something.
They were very excited. We
started our very first chapter book today, but it was hard for them to stay
focused. We kept stopping to
discuss the characters and what had happened. Hopefully after doing this several times they will get the
hang of it and want to do it on their own!
Common Core State Standards For ELA Appendix B: Text
Exemplars and Sample Performance Task: http://instruction.ers.tcoe.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Appendix_B.pdf
