4.3 instructional practices to motivate students to be lifelong readers and writers (e.g., teacher enthusiastically modeling reading and writing).
The goal of teaching students to read should go beyond just being able to read and include teaching them to love reading. There are many different materials and attention must be given to guiding students and helping them find something that they enjoy reading. It’s also important that teachers model a love for reading and provide opportunities for students to explore many different ideas through reading. I want students to use reading and writing outside of school to expand their knowledge and allow them to interact with others in as many ways as possible. I want them to have the desire to pick up a book and read it just because they want to. I also want them to take the initiative to read a newspaper or magazine to find information. Motivating them to want to do these things in their everyday life starts at a very young age. It’s important for them to have people who model the love of reading and encourage them to become lifelong readers and writers.
One artifact that I thought illustrated teaching kids the love of reading and motivating them to become lifelong readers is an article I wrote to be submitted to a journal. The article focuses on using read-alouds to teach comprehension and includes examples of how discussing and sharing books can be used to model enthusiasm for reading. Another artifact that is included which focuses on the importance of using good literature to teach reading comprehension skills is a reflective essay that I wrote. In this essay, I describe my own thoughts about teaching reading and tell about how sometimes instead of focusing on specific skills so much, maybe it would be more beneficial to focus on finding material that is interesting to students so that the comprehension tasks are meaningful and useful to them. Students need to be able to relate to a story and will be more active in thinking and applying comprehension strategies when the text is interesting to them. Using good literature and allowing reading to be used in a meaningful way in the classroom is motivating for students to find ways to use text outside the classroom as well. The third artifact I included is an article titled “My Son Clark Kent”. The article focuses on reading levels and how it can hinder a child’s motivation if they aren't as successful as they would like and reading at a level they think they should be. I included this article because it really made me think about leveling books and about how I discuss these different book levels with students so that they always feel successful and motivated to read.
The goal of teaching students to read should go beyond just being able to read and include teaching them to love reading. There are many different materials and attention must be given to guiding students and helping them find something that they enjoy reading. It’s also important that teachers model a love for reading and provide opportunities for students to explore many different ideas through reading. I want students to use reading and writing outside of school to expand their knowledge and allow them to interact with others in as many ways as possible. I want them to have the desire to pick up a book and read it just because they want to. I also want them to take the initiative to read a newspaper or magazine to find information. Motivating them to want to do these things in their everyday life starts at a very young age. It’s important for them to have people who model the love of reading and encourage them to become lifelong readers and writers.
One artifact that I thought illustrated teaching kids the love of reading and motivating them to become lifelong readers is an article I wrote to be submitted to a journal. The article focuses on using read-alouds to teach comprehension and includes examples of how discussing and sharing books can be used to model enthusiasm for reading. Another artifact that is included which focuses on the importance of using good literature to teach reading comprehension skills is a reflective essay that I wrote. In this essay, I describe my own thoughts about teaching reading and tell about how sometimes instead of focusing on specific skills so much, maybe it would be more beneficial to focus on finding material that is interesting to students so that the comprehension tasks are meaningful and useful to them. Students need to be able to relate to a story and will be more active in thinking and applying comprehension strategies when the text is interesting to them. Using good literature and allowing reading to be used in a meaningful way in the classroom is motivating for students to find ways to use text outside the classroom as well. The third artifact I included is an article titled “My Son Clark Kent”. The article focuses on reading levels and how it can hinder a child’s motivation if they aren't as successful as they would like and reading at a level they think they should be. I included this article because it really made me think about leveling books and about how I discuss these different book levels with students so that they always feel successful and motivated to read.