How might giving students opportunities to share writing impact student motivation to write in my third grade classroom?

Seminar Title

How might giving students opportunities to share writing impact student motivation to write in my third grade classroom?

Motivation

3rd Grade

Elementary

Language Arts

All Disciplines

Having trouble motivating certain students in your classroom? Let’s face it. We all have those students where getting them to start or finish a task is worse than getting a root canal. What gets your tough students moving? For my research, I decided to investigate what could light a fire in 3 of my students to write in their 3rd grade journals, and create a product that they’re proud of. My mission was to see how giving these students opportunities to share their work might spark that fire. I’m curious to know what stories of motivation you can bring and what motivational tricks you have up your own sleeve in your own educational niche. Join me on my action research journey as we unpack what truly drives students to work, and work well.

The question that guided my research is as follows: How might giving students opportunities to share writing motivate students to write in my third grade classroom? I noticed that many students are coming into third grade with a great attitude during writing, but as usual, there are just some that I can’t inspire to start or finish a task with pride. My ROL begins by stepping away from the classroom and looking at motivation through a broader lens. Motivation in any circumstance is broken down into four main factors that contribute to one's sense of motivation: value, self-efficacy (perceived competence), interest/choice, and interaction. It also explores ideas about how gender, as well as various writing activities, might impact students that are typically unmotivated during the writing block. In an attempt to motivate more students I chose to use the concept of interaction as my focus for implementation. I wondered how I could turn my classroom into a collaborative community of writers through peer interaction, and more specifically, through sharing their work with one another. A set of introductory lessons to the spirit of writing and the process of sharing our work set the foundation for student work in the classroom. I designed an implementation period that intentionally gave students opportunity for both writing with an audience and writing without an audience, an opportunity to share and not to share. Various data collection methods allowed me to see how the motivation of three (typically unmotivated) students may or may not have been affected when they wrote with the purpose of sharing. My before and after survey gives me my students’ point of view on sharing and writing in general. My motivation checklist and written observations serve as a tool for me to record my own point of view of students’ motivation during writing time. With a combination of these three perspectives, I’m able to synthesize my data into possible trends and make generalizations about their writing with sharing and without sharing. As I see these trends and make these generalizations, I’m able to make informed decisions about my writing block in the future. I also recognize that what may have worked or not worked with this class might not be valid with a different group of learners. Overall, I’m learning that giving students the opportunity to share their writing has a positive effect on the motivation of some and little or no effect on others.