Reading Motivation
Alicia Fallaw
Second Grade
Dobson Elementary School
Background/Introduction: As I conferenced with a student during the second week of school I stopped for a minute to look around the room. This was the time of day we did self-selected reading and at that moment I realized I only had a handful of students engaged and motivated enough to read independently. One student had been looking at the pictures of the same picture book for three days in a row. Another was asleep only to be awakened by the sound of the door closing. Others were completely off task and just looking around the room. Then there was one student that really comes to mind that when I asked why he was just sitting there, he proceeded to tell me he just did not like reading and did not feel like reading that day! I was amazed, shocked, and quite honestly I did not know what I was going to do. It is not just self-selected reading these children were not motivated about. It was all aspects of reading. During reading groups it was a struggle to get them involved in the story. They see take home reading as a chore. They look forward to our special class days in the computer lab, music, art, and p.e., but seldom show any excitement about going to the library. Reading is such a fundamental part of living and I want them to love it, not see it as one more thing they have to do! This is my third year of teaching and each year I find myself in the same situation with a group of students that for the most part are not motivated to read. I was really unprepared for this issue when I first started teaching. I just assumed that young children would love to read. I remember being their age and I think I enjoyed reading. However, I look at myself as an adult and I do not spend a great deal of time reading for leisure. Therefore, when we began this class and we started talking about what puzzled us, it didn’t take long to identify the topic of my research. My research questions are…
· What strategies are effective in motivating children to read?
· What role do choice & interest play in the motivation process?
I began my research by printing off several articles from the ASU library. Just in the first few pages I found strategies that I decided to implement into my classroom such as making my library area more appealing. (Braxton, Barbara. 39-40) The article suggested having a couch or beanbags for students to curl up in and read. Reading needs to be given the “Wow” factor. The article discussed the importance of read alouds and that you should read aloud to your class with the drama of an Oscar winner. Another article suggested that allowing students to share about books they have read could also be a motivator. (Hunter, Phyllis. 36-40) The article also discussed how the teacher plays a vital role in the motivation process. It suggested that you read the first few pages of a book and then invite students to sign up to read the remainder of the book. I began doing this in my classroom and my students absolutely loved it. I have several books that correspond with our reading story each week. I have always used the books as read alouds only and guarded them as something the students just would not have access to. However, when I saw the response I got from “auctioning off” my books after reading a few pages I decided to quit guarding them as sacred. If the students were that motivated to read them, then they were given access to my books as well.
As mentioned in earlier articles the classroom library is a key element in the motivation process. The article suggested that your classroom library should be highly visible, appealing, and comfortable. Children are people too and if I were going to sit down and read it would be in a comfortable spot. It also mentioned one teacher having an old canoe filled with pillows in her classroom library. This article was based on the thought that children need to be reading on their individual reading level. This opinion was a common thread among many of the articles I read as well as in the Four Blocks Literacy Model. However, my study is on reading motivation so I did allow my students to read any book they chose instead of them reading only on their independent level. Access to books was noted to directly impact achievement and motivation to read. According to a report they listed in the article from NAEP “In classrooms with well designed library centers, children interact more with books, demonstrate more positive attitudes toward reading, spend more time reading, and exhibit higher levels of reading achievement”. The article went on to say that research demonstrates that students in classrooms with a diverse collection of appealing books read 50 percent more than students who do not have access to a classroom library. Children need direct access to a variety of literature. Access will gauge how much children actually read. Our textbooks are not really created for pleasure reading. A classroom library with a variety of books will sell students on reading. Many children do not have access to books at home. I remember last year our librarian would not let us check out books the last three weeks of school because she was doing inventory. I told my students they could read books from home for the remainder of the school year and list them each night for their take home reading homework. Most of the students in my class were elated because this gave them free choice. However, after 3 days I had several students come to me and say they did not have anything else to read at home. For the last three weeks of school I sent home my own personal books for them to read and I think this really confirmed to me that many children only have access to literature the school provides. Research has also shown that receiving books as gifts motivates students to read as well. (Joyce, Marilyn. 39-40) I implemented this into my classroom and I have ordered a book for every child in my class for Christmas, Easter, and the end of the year.
Patricia Cunningham, Dorothy P. Hall, and Cheryl M. Sigmon also mention the “classroom library” as part of the Four Blocks Literacy Model. They suggest there should be books, books, and more books. They also suggest that children should have access to other reading materials such as magazines and newspapers. Another aspect of motivation is letting students choose their own reading material. Many researchers disagree with total free choice and suggest a system based on choice of different books that are all on the child’s independent reading level. I had decided to implement total free choice throughout my study even before finding an article that listed this as a motivational strategy. Letting students “self select” their reading material allows them to take ownership in the reading process. (Kragler, Sherry & Nolley, Christine. 354-365)
I also learned from reading several articles that motivation to read is much deeper than just what goes on in my classroom. The love of reading that is instilled at home at an early age is an entire new research topic. So for now I focused only on my classroom. A great deal of the literature I found was on extrinsic motivation and programs such as Accelerated Reader. I chose to focus more on intrinsic motivation and there was a direct correlation between the articles I had read and the strategies I decided to implement in my classroom to improve the motivation of my students to read. The articles confirmed my belief that choice and environment do play a crucial role in the motivation process.
Participants: I teach second grade at Dobson Elementary School. We are the largest school in the county and we have approximately 685 students. Two thirds of those students are low income and one third are Hispanic. I decided to include my entire class in the research study because I wanted this to make a positive difference and I wanted them all to benefit from the study. I have 23 students. My class is made up of 13 girls and 10 boys. I have 7 Hispanic students, 1 Biracial student, and 15 Caucasian students. Out of my entire class population I have 14 children identified “at risk” due to low achievement in reading and academic ability.
Interventions/instruction procedure: As soon as I decided I would study reading motivation I accessed the Garfield survey and immediately gave it to my entire class. I gave the survey whole group and really encouraged them to think about their response before they marked anything. I emphasized that there was no wrong answer and I wanted them to be completely honest. I even made them put up a barricade of file folders so they would not be tempted to color in what their neighbor had colored in. That afternoon I scored the surveys and it made my beliefs concrete. Point blank my class just did not like to read! Now it was time to do something about it. The next day we talked as a group and I listed their responses on the board. We made a list of what we liked and what we did not like about reading. You can see their responses in the chart below.
Many of the responses like “it (reading) was too easy” were made just to be contributing to the conversation but others were really how they felt about the reading we did in class. You could tell many of the responses were genuine. I took all of their responses into consideration when I was deciding what strategies to implement. Before I implemented anything into my daily classroom routine I took a step back and I looked at where I was having the most trouble. It was apparent that Self Selected Reading was when my class was the most off task. I wanted to gauge how on task the class was during Self Selected reading so I created a checklist to document on task and off task behavior. I just listed each child’s name and in-between conferences during Self Selected Reading I would take a few minutes to scan the room. I would watch each child for 10-15 seconds and put a plus for on task behavior and a minus for off task behavior. It did not take long to see that there were more off task behaviors than on task behaviors. It was consistently the same children off task each day. I then decided to look at how I was currently doing Self Selected Reading. I had students divided into baskets with book on their independent reading level. I had been asked by the students many times if they could read out of another basket and I always told them no because that is the way I was told to do Self Selected reading. Then after the conversation I had with you about what I was doing not being “self selected” at all but more of a forced choice I decided that would be one area I would change for my research project. That was the first of many changes to come in my research project. I have to admit when I discussed my strategies with my principal, she was more than receptive to all of my ideas except for free choice during Self Selected Reading. She feels as if children sometimes take advantage of free choice during Self Selected Reading. She feels they compete to choose harder books so they appear to be the best reader in the class. She was very reluctant to even let me try. She portrayed her main focus of Self Selected Reading to be more on comprehension than on motivation. After much persuading she agreed to let me temporarily try it. So, the next day I announced that they could choose books from any book basket and they were ecstatic to say the least. I kept anecdotal notes throughout my study and I noticed over and over children commenting on how they loved choosing from any basket. I asked Timothy, one of my lower readers, why he loved the red basket so much. Every time I conferenced with him he had a book from the red basket, which was a higher-level book. He quite honestly said “Because that is where all of the good books are!” As I looked through the red basket for myself I noticed there were more non-fiction books and Timothy loved non-fiction so that made perfect sense. This one change made such a dramatic difference that I felt bad for not changing it sooner.
Another aspect of Self Selected Reading that I changed was letting students share good books they had read with the class. They were so excited about reading from the new baskets and they enjoyed getting up and telling the class about the books. I also thought this was a good experience for them in retelling a book. When I do a formal miscue reading with them they have to retell the story. Many times they just want to tell the bare minimum but when they started getting up in front of the class they went on and on with details from the story. Even children that were lower level students started asking to share about the books they had read. Sharing with the class also held them accountable for the information because they know I know what the book is really about and I am listening to their retell as well. They were learning, however, were not even aware of it.
The next change that I made was even better. I had read many articles as I mentioned earlier that talked about the library area of your classroom being “inviting”. One of the things the children had listed they did not like was sitting at their seats to read. I had first planned to buy a beanbag chair for them to sit in during Self Selected Reading. I looked at several and never could find just the right one for my classroom. Then Jamie called me one night and she had found a moonchair. She convinced me they were more popular with kids than beanbags were. I had already talked about it with my principal and she agreed to buy it for my class. As you will see later this was the most phenomenal change I made!! I brought it in the next day and the kids went wild over it. They could not wait for a turn to sit and read in it. I have each child’s name on a popsicle stick and I draw a stick each day to see who gets to sit in the moonchair. Needless to say they never let me forget it. They start watching the clock and as soon as I ask the class helper for the week to put out the book baskets they start begging for me to draw for the moonchair. I sat back one day and watched Jason read while sitting in the moonchair and I thought how comfortable it looked. Then I thought of my own leisure reading and where I like to read. It is normally all curled up in a big, soft chair. What more could you ask for? To this day I have never had any trouble with off task behavior from anyone sitting in the moonchair. It makes me wish I had room for 23 of them in my room.