Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Motivation

What motivates us to write?  The last couple days haven't been especially motivating for me...I haven't had anything important enough to write about - or at least not anything positive. 

But, I was thinking about motivation of sixth graders - I taught sixth grade today and they seemed so engaged, even motivated, to participate in the conversation I had with them about research - and then to delve into the project that they were beginning.  They were, most of them, motivated to learn about their subject. 

One of the reasons they were seems to be the opportunity to make their own choices.  The importance of choice has been the topic of many papers in my personal education career - and I think I saw the idea of personal choice as motivator at work again today.  I wish that more teachers (especially middle school teachers) allowed more choice in their classrooms.

 

2 comments:

  1. Yes, and I think helping students understand the responsibility of choice gives them the capability to write in a way that is powerful and essentially more meaningful to them.

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