At the beginning of this chapter, it states that researchers have found that experiences that promote motivation offer students choice, challenge, relevance, authenticity, social collaboration, and success. What I like about this is that not only does the book tell you this, but it also has mini sections that talk about each one. It also gives you the objectives and standards for motivating reading and writing. They help students develop the desire to read and write and as a reading concentration this would be helpful to know.
I also found it helpful when the book talked about the features of a well designed literacy center. It is nice to know what a literacy center should have or what it should look like. I would have never have thought to add stuffed animals and puppets to my literacy corner unless I was teaching preschool or kindergarten.
A section I thought was interesting was that dramatic play can be used to motivate literacy development. After reading the section, it made sense that dramatic play would motivate and help literacy. I had just never thought about using it before. Did you ever think about using dramic play as a motivation for literacy development?
I was commenting on another post about ways to give relevant reasons to work with fictional text. I think a dramatic play would be perfect for this. Students would also find this a very exciting thing to do if you were able to have parents come see it. Students could make props and costumes. It is definitely important to put a lot of thought into your literacy centers. This is something I would not have thought about as a student in elementary school, but I can definitely see what benefits it would have.
ReplyDeleteHi Megan!
ReplyDeleteI agree, I had never thought about using dramatic play as motivation for literacy development until reading this chapter as well! There more I read about it, the more that I saw the benefits that it would have for the students and the creativity that it would bring. I think dramatic play is great way to help children develop literacy skills in a unique way. When the students are using their assigned roles and dramatize situations, they are using skills that they normally wouldn’t that will help them in the long run. I also agreed with you when you talked about how helpful it was when the features of the literacy center were described. I had no idea what it could look like before and when the book discussed it, it made me excited to her that it had a very comfortable feeling to it. I loved the fact that you can make it as welcoming as you’d like and It made me realize the benefits it would have in the classroom.
I think that I overlooked dramatic play because it was never offered while I was in elementary school. It seemed that we were always sitting in our desks, silently doing worksheets and tasks that weren't beneficial to our learning. I think that it is important for preservice teachers to remember to keep the energy alive and keep students engaged and I believe that dramatic play is the perfect way to do that!
ReplyDeleteDramatic play was a technique that I never saw as a way of motivating students. It was something that I just considered to be fun! I really enjoyed your post, Megan. I thought you did a great job go highlighting the chapter. I thought all of the different ways of motivating students to read were very helpful, and gave me great insight into what I would like to use in my future classroom.
ReplyDeleteDramatic play is a technique that I have actually never seen implemented in a classroom before. I understand how helpful it can be for children new to learning to read and I think that if I ever teach a class that has students young enough to benefit I will consider having a dramatic play area in my classroom. I have actually observed how excited kindergarten students get when they get to pick a stuffed animal to read to. This is a no pressure way to get students to attempt to read aloud and work on their skills. Until I saw this in a classroom I never would have thought of utilizing stuffed animals as a tool for reading instruction.
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