This week we were assigned chapter 12: Motivation in Learning
and Teaching which discussed how students’ beliefs and attributions about
control, the nature of knowledge, mindsets, and self-worth can influence
motivation. It also explained how teachers can influence and encourage students’
motivation to learn. Chapter 14: Teaching Every Student covered the pros and
cons for the common core standards and the appropriate uses of direct
instruction, homework, questioning, feedback, and group discussion. Chapter 15:
Classroom assessment, Grading, and Standardized Testing covered the effects of
grading on students and the types of strategies teachers can use to communicate
to parents about grades and how to use formative assessments to improve
instruction and describing ways to design and evaluate them.
I found chapter 12 to be very interesting to be because it
deals with motivation. This chapter deals with motivation when it comes to
learning and it is interesting to read something that relates to me and when I was
in school about learning. When reading the first page in the chapter (pg. 462) in
the section “Meeting some students”, it was interesting enough to see the many
factors that influence motivation. I happen to relate to some of their problems.
Some of the areas that influence motivation are choices, getting started,
intensity, persistence, and thoughts and feelings. I myself find it hard to be
motivated in school and I know I will be dealing with these motivation problems
with my future students as well. Personally, I see how in this class I am between
trait and state because I want to learn educational psychology because in teaching
there is more beyond teaching students than many others might think, but I also
need to know educational psychology because I have assignments that need to be
turned in. My motivation reflects on these two things and I have a feeling that
some of my future students will either be between both or one or the other.
However, it is my job to look more into the meaning of motivation so I will
better understand my own students.
Teachers are interested in student motivation to learn. And that
involves both state and trait (Pg. 491). Page 491 brought up something thought-provoking
that really captured my attention. TARGET is a model that identify six areas
where teachers make decisions that can influence student motivation to learn. Though
there are these six areas, what makes it difficult to pull it together is if
students can produce the five elements to have the motivation to learn overall.
Students who are not motivated will not learn effectively. They won’t retain the information;
they won’t participate and some of them may even become disruptive. I had some
friends in the past who did not care for the information the teacher was
teaching us because they were not interested at all. Even though they knew they
had to learn the information it was more just so they can pass the class and be
over with it. I find this to be one of the most difficult for students because
they know that they need to learn regardless, but will they remember the
information is the main question and fear that I might have to come across. I
know when I was in high school in science class, I did not care for chemistry.
I knew I had to pass the class to keep up my grade point average so I studied
for the test, but after taking the test I did not know or remembered what I had
learned. I believed that I wasn’t motivated enough by the teacher because the
class itself and the teacher were not interesting to me either. I believe as an educator,
it is important to make the information we give out as interesting as it can be.
Chapter 14 dealt with characterizes for effective teaching
for students with disabilities. I found myself reading that section and
relating to it because of my current job. I work with students with disabilities
and I did not pay much attention to the teachers who are teaching them. This section
has helped me realizes that they do not have anything unique but its because of
their teaching practices and sensitivity to their students. I worked with a teacher
this current summer who did not go into teaching for special education. She
simply fell into it and loved it. She had good teaching practices and knew what
each of her students needed academically as well as day-to-day life skills.
Chapter 15 dived into assessments. Assessments can be
designed to go beyond paper and pencil exercises to include judgments based on
students’ performances, portfolios, projects, or products (pg. 593). Many of my
students that I had this past school year had to take several forms of
assessments in order for the teachers and service providers to determine what
they know or do not know and how they are progressing. Though many students
including myself take a standardized test to see how we score among others in our
school, state, and nationwide, I do believe that a standardized test does not
see how a student is overall. There are several factors that can show error in
test likes these such as cheating, mood, motivation, and test-taking skills
(pg. 594). Which is why I believe in not using a standardized test to determine
a students’ true ability. The current teacher that I worked with this past
school year did not like taking the information our diagnostic team gathered on
our students because they only tested our student on a one-day basis. Working
with younger children ages 3-5, it is not easy to determine how well to know an
academic skill or life skill. Factors that my teacher would consider is if the
child had a good day or what time did they perform these tests. Some of our
students work better in the morning and some in the afternoon once they have built
up their motivation. Another factor is if the child ate or not or if they talked
to in their native language or not. They also have to consider the child’s culture
as well. One service provider that was assessing one of our students kept
calling that student by his first name and he was not answering her. She
thought he did not know his name and there might be a problem. However, the
service provider learned that in his culture, the family calls their child by
his middle name. These are factors I know my teachers consider when assessing a
student because she takes her time to know them on a deeper level. It is hard
to just generalize a student based on a test if they themselves have not taken
time to know the student on a certain level.
These chapters were interesting, to say the least. I believe
they closed this book with the main focus on overall teaching. It is important to
know students and their motivations and where that might be for them. It is
important to know how to teach every student and how to assess and grade them. These
chapters are important factors that I need to take account for when it comes to
student teaching and also when I do become a teacher because these factors and
ideas will always be there and each and every year I will know more with
practice and growth with the students.
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