Introduction
I have always loved to read. I never thought about why and no one ever asked me. As I started teaching, it’s no surprise that I enjoyed teaching reading the most. Teaching middle school has allowed me to share my love of young adult fiction with many classes and I have had great success guiding many nonreaders to also enjoy books. Before my action research started I taught reading for enjoyment. My theory was, if students enjoy reading, they would read more, and therefore, be better readers. When someone asked how I knew they were better, I would point to test scores.
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I was concerned about comprehension and looking at reading from a writer’s point of view. I asked students questions like “What did the author do that made you want to keep reading?” Students would then use the books they read as models, and the qualities that kept them reading, to write their own stories. I was hesitant to have students analyze literature because I knew they hated it.
I have long wondered what intrinsically motivates students to read. In the past I worked hard to match students to great books. This worked for some students. I also assigned 30 minutes of reading everyday and gave a grade for the number of pages they read. This worked for more students. And then, there were those that just hated to read, no matter what I did. Nothing worked for them. In the past I have read a book out loud to the class and noticed that all but one or two students were totally engaged. They didn’t want me to stop. I saw that they were enjoying the story but I felt guilty that I was doing the work for them. They weren’t actually reading. I was.
This led to my next wondering. What is the purpose of reading anyway? I believe that students need to practice the physical act of reading, but is there more to it? Why do we read? At the beginning of this school year, my answer was for enjoyment and to find information. But, how do these purposes connect to analyzing texts, which seems to be the purpose for reading in most high schools and colleges? Do we read to become better writers so we can communicate our own ideas more clearly, as I had focused on in my previous classes? There are moments when we read for all of these reasons and more, but I had already discovered that not all lead to intrinsic motivation to read. Especially for students who find reading hard. How could I cultivate a love of reading and at the same time push students to find more meaning in the books they read? How could I guide students to find their own deep purpose for reading?
All of these questions were swirling in my head as I began my teaching residency at High Tech Middle, a school that promotes a project-based pedagogy, where students read and write often to produce high quality work for authentic audiences. In my first few months at the school, I had already seen how this project-based approach supported student motivation, persistence, and collaboration. I wondered how I could replicate these sorts of experiences for my students with reading, and if projects might be the key. Would projects offer an authentic purpose for reading? Would students’ excitement about a project build intrinsic motivation to read about a particular topic, even when the reading got tough? Would projects allow for natural collaboration, where students rely on each other to analyze texts and to develop a better understanding of what they read?
Over the year I explored these wonderings through the research question: How can projects help build intrinsic motivation and authentic purpose for reading? I hoped that my research journey would lead to students with improved reading skills, higher levels of confidence in their reading ability, and an authentic joy for reading. At the end of my year I hoped those students who easily gave up when reading got hard would persist and want to read. And I hoped that all my students would see reading as an important tool for driving their own learning.
I have long wondered what intrinsically motivates students to read. In the past I worked hard to match students to great books. This worked for some students. I also assigned 30 minutes of reading everyday and gave a grade for the number of pages they read. This worked for more students. And then, there were those that just hated to read, no matter what I did. Nothing worked for them. In the past I have read a book out loud to the class and noticed that all but one or two students were totally engaged. They didn’t want me to stop. I saw that they were enjoying the story but I felt guilty that I was doing the work for them. They weren’t actually reading. I was.
This led to my next wondering. What is the purpose of reading anyway? I believe that students need to practice the physical act of reading, but is there more to it? Why do we read? At the beginning of this school year, my answer was for enjoyment and to find information. But, how do these purposes connect to analyzing texts, which seems to be the purpose for reading in most high schools and colleges? Do we read to become better writers so we can communicate our own ideas more clearly, as I had focused on in my previous classes? There are moments when we read for all of these reasons and more, but I had already discovered that not all lead to intrinsic motivation to read. Especially for students who find reading hard. How could I cultivate a love of reading and at the same time push students to find more meaning in the books they read? How could I guide students to find their own deep purpose for reading?
All of these questions were swirling in my head as I began my teaching residency at High Tech Middle, a school that promotes a project-based pedagogy, where students read and write often to produce high quality work for authentic audiences. In my first few months at the school, I had already seen how this project-based approach supported student motivation, persistence, and collaboration. I wondered how I could replicate these sorts of experiences for my students with reading, and if projects might be the key. Would projects offer an authentic purpose for reading? Would students’ excitement about a project build intrinsic motivation to read about a particular topic, even when the reading got tough? Would projects allow for natural collaboration, where students rely on each other to analyze texts and to develop a better understanding of what they read?
Over the year I explored these wonderings through the research question: How can projects help build intrinsic motivation and authentic purpose for reading? I hoped that my research journey would lead to students with improved reading skills, higher levels of confidence in their reading ability, and an authentic joy for reading. At the end of my year I hoped those students who easily gave up when reading got hard would persist and want to read. And I hoped that all my students would see reading as an important tool for driving their own learning.