Quote - "Four key features appear to be associated with motivation to read: access to books in the classroom, opportunities to self select books, familiarity with books, and social interactions with others about books."
Comment - This article by Linda Gambrell helped to explain the looming question, "how do I get these kids excited about reading?" I love to read and so I just assumed that my own excitement would be enough motivation for students. I thought it was interesting that teachers shouldn't just model reading, they need to be explicit readers. Meaning they need to share what they are reading with their class. Then, students will be motivated to share as well. I also was interested that in the study conducted that students rarely spoke about books their teacher had assigned them to read.
Question - Is it useful to assign students books to read in Elementary classrooms or should they be allowed to simply enjoy choosing books themselves. Should the teacher just read aloud books that they would assign for the whole class?
In regards to your question, I thought back to my elementary days and I remember most of the books my teachers would read to us as a class rather than books that I was assigned. I also remember books I got to pick and that I had in my personal library. I think that it would be better as teachers to just read to the class and then talk about it all together.
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