Enhancing Elementary Students' Motivation to Read and Write: A Classroom Intervention Study

Abstract

The authors examined how different reading and language arts assignments influenced 3rd-grade students' motivational goals, strategy use, and achievement affect, that is, anxiety and self-concept. Participants included 8 teachers and 187 students from 1 suburban school. During weekly planning sessions, the teachers modified their reading and language arts assignments to increase the number of opportunities students had (a) to write multiple paragraphs, (b) to collaborate with peers, and (c) to monitor their progress over extended periods of time. The students' motivational patterns varied according to how well the teachers implemented these changes in their assignments. In classrooms where the teachers implemented the desired modifications, the students were less focused on teacher approval or normative standards of evaluation. Contrary to expectations, the intervention did not influence the students' patterns of strategy use or achievement affect. The results highlight ways in which teachers can structure reading and language arts assignments to positively influence the students' motivational profiles.

Teaching Elementary School Students to Play With Meanings and Genre

“…Numerous studies over the past two decades have analyzed in particular the conditions that can make a writing task attractive (Boscolo & Gelati, 2007; 30 P. Boscolo et al Hidi, Berndorff, & Ainley, 2002;Miller, 2003;Miller & Meece, 1997, 1999. These studies can be roughly grouped under two headings.…”

“…A task can be considered challenging to the degree to which it stimulates a student's cognitive involvement in a collaborative context (Miller, 2003;Miller & Meece, 1997, 1999. More specifically, a challenging task requires students to assume increasingly higher levels of responsibility for learning.…”

Are Disadvantaged Students Unmotivated to Read? An Interview Study of Engaged and Disengaged Readers in Low SES Australian Schools

“…While these cognitive models have provided an empirical foundation for designing instructional interventions [38], [57], for the greater part efforts thus far to transact such knowledge into effective practice have been neither consistently effective nor readily realized for students who are at risk of reading failure or who are from disadvantaged backgrounds. Certainly, more studies are needed to help us effect better transactions, especially among those students from at risk categories and different disadvantaged backgrounds.…”

Effects of Sex, Third Grade Reading Achievement and Motivation as Predictors of Fourth Grade Reading Achievement of Hispanic Students: A Path Analysis

“…This is of particular significance at the elementary level where the foundation for life-long reading habits is set. Within literacy engagement, creating interest and motivation is recognized as an area of need being faced in today's classrooms (Gambrell, 2000;Guthrie et al, 1997;Miller & Meece, 1997).…”