In our last class we talked about a pizza hut reward program for reading. This reminded me of something I learned in a lower level TE course. In TE 150 we talked about the difference between extrinsic and intrinsic motivating. As you may recall students learn better and are more involved when they are pushed by intrinsic motivation. This being said does not however say that kids do not benefit from some extrinsic motivation.
I agree that reading programs that offer rewards are good for getting kids started reading but they I do not feel that they hold all children’s interest. Programs such as these often discourage slower readers. When these programs start almost all the kids are excited to work towards their first prize however this excitement fades quickly. The quick readers immediately start to show results and get prizes while the slower readers take a while longer. At first this is fine but the slow readers quickly fall further and further behind and many get to a point where they don’t see a point in trying. If they act like they don’t care to try they won’t look slow or dumb.
Another response that students take to these programs is reading shorter easier books that are way below their ability level so they can finish them quicker. The faster they finish the more prizes they can get and the program is no longer beneficial at pushing kids to read and challenge themselves.
These are just a couple of the flaws that this system causes. My question is how can we change this? How can we encourage students of all levels to push themselves past their comfort zone with reading and work towards personal goals? Is there a system that can be developed to spark and keep the interest of children to read? The system now has a lot of students asking themselves why bother if they cannot keep up with the whole class.
I agree with this, extrinsic and intrinsic motivation will always be something as teacher that we will struggle with and I do see the benefit for extrinsic motivation for some. I think there are some ways to make these "reading rewards programs" better as I saw when I did my service learning at an elementary school last year. I think the key is when working with a classroom to make a common goal and try to take the focus off of individual results. The students did a read-a-thon last year but instead of personal rewards, the reward was a pizza party for the class as a whole if they reached their goal. They also made it for time spent reading, rather than number of pages. So I do think there are ways to make these extrinsic motivations work, and teachers are attempting to make strides in the right direction.
ReplyDelete