I assigned some reading to my students from our great new textbook, Conceptual Integrated Science. It is such a great book with lots of pictures and examples from everyday life. It is such easy reading, but my students just won't do it. I'm relying on them to read the material before labs to make our precious class time useful. I just don't know what to do to get them motivated.
2 comments:
It is possible that the reason your kids are not reading, or seem like they are not reading, is not due to the lack of motivation, but because of the text itself. It is possible that they find it too difficult or too boring. Try bringing in more authentic pieces of text that interesting to the students. What grade level do you teach? Most middle and high school students will show more interest if the text is exciting and about something that is relevant to their lives.
Authentic texts have changed the way students read in my classroom. I find magazine articles, short stories, parts of real science research, and even videos to convey information to my students. The variety keeps their interest. Also, these text vary in length and difficulty (as opposed to a very monotonous style of a book), so students do not get bored as easily.
Anyway, try this authentic text idea and let me know how it works out. Email me if you would like some specific examples (let me know what your lesson is on).
Hi Judi, I have found that modeling the reading in front of the class works pretty well for my high school freshmen. They just aren't used to reading text books and need some guidance. I use a doc-cam and show them how to read the text book using a dual-strategy dual-column note sheet to capture important or confusing sections. The first column is the quote or idea, and the second column is a comment or question. Now we spend a few minutes in class going over questions they wrote down from the previous night's reading.
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