Motivating Readers
I recently wrote on the importance of intrinsically motivated readers. There is much to be gained from providing texts around students’ interests. How can we do this? The obvious answer is to ask and they’ll tell us. This works for most students, but you may have observed that some students don’t appear to know what they’re interests are. We only need to watch as students select silent reading material from the classroom library to identify those students who consistently “mill around” finding it hard to select a text.
One way to gather a bit more information is to give an interview (oral or written) to determine:
- hobbies or interests
- strengths (things you’re good at)
- issues students feel strongly about
- favourite television shows or movies (help to identify genres of interest, eg. mystery, adventure, etc)
- best book ever read
- best book read to
- knowledge of series’ books
- topics of interest (eg. volcanoes/wild animals/skateboarding/music)
- preferred reading material (eg. chapter books/short stories/non fiction/magazines/comics/poetry/etc)
- a text students would like to read (if able)
- what friends, family members or others in cohort are reading
Responses to the interview questions assist teachers to select books for the classroom book corner, book boxes, guided and independent reading.
Understanding more about learners enables us to provide what we hope will become “hot books”, or material that hooks students into reading, intrinsically motivating them to read.
What tips do you have for learning more about what motivates your students?
Brain storms are a great idea, especially as a whole class focus this way you can see clearly whether there is a topic you could focus on as a class, this could be fortngihtly/term etc. great ideas above, I love the idea of a written Q&A sheet which yu could then take away and decide how to hone in on their interests individually.