Instructional practices to motivate students to be lifelong readers and writers (e.g., teacher enthusiastically modeling reading and writing).
Simply teaching students about the importance and functionalities of reading and writing is not enough. Educators must demonstrate the many facets of reading and writing in authentic and engaging ways. We need to tie reading and writing to real-world situations that matter for kids and for us. The enthusiasm this brings is infectious to students and motivates them to become lifelong readers and writers.
My first artifact is a writing lesson from Lucy Calkins' curriculum I wrote and implemented. I do this for every lesson to summarize it and cater to my students' needs and understanding, while also making the lesson engaging and interactive for them. My second artifact is my students' ocean creature research projects. This stemmed from our final unit in the Lucy Calkins curriculum. This project involved reading and writing as students researched their selected creature and formulated books about them. Every day, students were excited about writing workshop because they had ownership of their books and because they knew their books would soon have an audience. My third artifact is page 298 in Block & Paris' book, Comprehension Instruction: Reasearch-Based Best Practices (2008). On this page, the authors discuss the role of motivation in reading achievement and comprehension. They present evidence that motivation both directly and indirectly effects reading comprehension. My fourth artifact is Susan Zimmerman's chapter in the book, Comprehension: Going Forward (2011). Zimmerman discusses how children enter school ready to learn and without fear of failure. This enthusiasm can be squelched by teachers if we are not careful. Zimmerman discusses examples of what not to do as well as what to do in order to use students' curiosity and interests to foster literacy instruction and learning. These artifacts demonstrate my understanding of the role of motivation and various ways to motivate students to become lifelong readers and writers.
Simply teaching students about the importance and functionalities of reading and writing is not enough. Educators must demonstrate the many facets of reading and writing in authentic and engaging ways. We need to tie reading and writing to real-world situations that matter for kids and for us. The enthusiasm this brings is infectious to students and motivates them to become lifelong readers and writers.
My first artifact is a writing lesson from Lucy Calkins' curriculum I wrote and implemented. I do this for every lesson to summarize it and cater to my students' needs and understanding, while also making the lesson engaging and interactive for them. My second artifact is my students' ocean creature research projects. This stemmed from our final unit in the Lucy Calkins curriculum. This project involved reading and writing as students researched their selected creature and formulated books about them. Every day, students were excited about writing workshop because they had ownership of their books and because they knew their books would soon have an audience. My third artifact is page 298 in Block & Paris' book, Comprehension Instruction: Reasearch-Based Best Practices (2008). On this page, the authors discuss the role of motivation in reading achievement and comprehension. They present evidence that motivation both directly and indirectly effects reading comprehension. My fourth artifact is Susan Zimmerman's chapter in the book, Comprehension: Going Forward (2011). Zimmerman discusses how children enter school ready to learn and without fear of failure. This enthusiasm can be squelched by teachers if we are not careful. Zimmerman discusses examples of what not to do as well as what to do in order to use students' curiosity and interests to foster literacy instruction and learning. These artifacts demonstrate my understanding of the role of motivation and various ways to motivate students to become lifelong readers and writers.