Motivation: Reading Hard or Hardly Reading?

Our class discussion and assigned reading of chapter eight in Literacy for the 21st Century on motivation has inspired me to blog about it. I decided to blog about motivation because one of my goals as an educator of early childhood is to motivate my students to read and become better readers. English was my second language and I struggled with reading my first years in school. Of course, I did not enjoy reading then because I struggled with reading a great deal. But once I learned how to read, my passion for reading ignited and I couldn’t stop reading. I enjoyed reading a lot. I want to motivate my students to read and grow to love reading and understand the importance reading can play in their lives. In my opinion, the distinction of whether or not students are reading because they want to or have to sets the mood for reading. They could really enjoy what they’re reading because they want to read a particular text or they might be bored, challenged, and unmotivated to read because the text isn’t interesting to them. Fortunately, most of my students enjoy reading. They read a lot. Most of them cannot wait to finish their work early so they can get a few minutes to read. However, there are some students who struggle with reading, especially my ESOL kids. I caught students holding a book, pretending to read, and just looking around. It’s not that they can’t read because they’ve all read with me in our guided reading groups and I know they can read. But they don’t want to read and they find reading to be boring.

According to Tompkins, G. (2010), there are factors influencing students desire to read. One of these factors is students are more interested in reading when their teachers make them feel confident and successful in their reading. I believe this to be true because students may not want to read because they have difficulties reading or they think they’re not good at it. So when teachers encourage them and boost their confidence in their ability to read, students can become more interested in reading because they feel better about themselves. Secondly, when students can take ownership of their reading, such as selecting the books they can read, they are intrinsically motivated to read. In other words, if students can have a say or offer some suggestions to the text they read in guided reading groups, they will be more motivated to read it because they got to choose what the group reads. In my class, this does not happen a lot. Most of the time, I am the one selecting the texts for students to read and the texts I choose are suggested to me by my teammates. Maybe I can let students choose what genre or topics of books to read and see if it impacts their motivation to read or not. Third, students are more engaged with books and the reading process when they are presented with opportunities to listen to the teacher read aloud and when students are given time to read independently. I find this to be encouraging because I always try to read a book aloud to my class to introduce to them a new concept. As I am reading aloud a text, I model the reading strategies we have learned in class. For instance, I model how to make a prediction as to what will happen to the text by looking for clues on the cover and the title of the book. As I begin reading, I model how to verify if my prediction is correct or not. Also, as I am reading, I ask questions and share connections I made with the text. It is true students are more engaged during read a lot because they’re being read to and they look to listen to the connections the teachers made to the text. This is not true all the time for every student. I notice some students just zone out when they have to sit and listen to someone else read so I’m always on my toes to try to reengage the student and help the student focus. I do this by trying to make the text more applicable to their lives so they can see a real world connection to the text.

I’ve made some progress when it comes to motivating my students to read. I’ve walked around the room during D.E.A.R time to observe what books students are choosing to read and made a note of it. I’ve also talked to students to see what their interests are and try to make those books accessible to them in our classroom library. I am taking small steps in motivating my students to read and I’m still learning and finding different ways to do so. How are you motivating your students to read?