How Garfield Helps with Motivation

I have already discussed the importance of tapping into student’s interest to get more motivated readers and writers.  Letting students choose their own books to read and giving them the opportunity to write about something that interests them will really yield better results from them in the classroom. A good way to find out a student’s interests, even in the beginning of the year, is to have them fill out an interest survey.  A great article on Education.com discusses the importance of surveying students to find out how they feel about reading and what interests they have. 

One of the more popular interest inventories is the “The Elementary Reading Attitude Survey” that features four different expressions from Garfield the cat. This survey is especially successful with the younger students, and I have used this in my classroom as well. The students love filling it out and circling which Garfield represents their feelings and interests, and it gives me the opportunity to see how students feel about reading and what they are interested in. It is a great resource if students are unsure or reluctant to write. I can pull out their survey, and we usually quickly find something on the interest portion of the survey to have the student write about.

The MRP (Motivation to Read profile) is often a great interest survey to give to older students.  A reading survey is given to the students, and then the second part is done one-on-one with the student. This profile will really give you a clear idea of each child’s interest, and it definitely lets you get to know that student better.

Excerpt from Strategies for Struggling Readers and Writers, by M.J Meyerson, D.L. Kulesza, 2006 edition, p. 29-30. © ______ 2006, Allyn & Bacon, an imprint of Pearson Education Inc. Used by permission.  All rights reserved.