Friday, March 21, 2014

Teachers as Readers: Self-efficacy and motivation

Last week, I read For One More Day by Mitch Albom.  I just finished reading I Will Carry You: The Sacred Dance of Grief and Joy by Angie Smith a few days ago, and have now begun reading The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd.


Vacca, Vacca, and Mraz (2011) states that a high level of self-efficacy in content literacy situations is exhibited in confident learners, and vice versa.  Science is one subject that I have always struggled with personally, and I cannot ever remember feeling confident when it came to learning something of a scientific nature.  Looking back, I do believe that it negatively effected my motivation to succeed in science.  I took the required two science classes in high school to satisfy graduation requirements but did not pursue any further science instruction beyond that.

Reading and writing were two subjects that I had a fairly high level of self-efficacy.  I was very motivated in those subjects and wanted to succeed.  They're also the two subjects I most enjoy teaching.  I love teaching children how to read and write.  In kindergarten, most of them go from children who can maybe write their name, read a word or two, and hopefully know several letters and sounds, and by the end of their year of kindergarten, they're writing sentences and reading books.  I love guiding them through that progress and watch that growth.

My daughter loves reading.  She's six years old; we homeschool.  Her and I sit together most days, and we each read our own books.  It's fun now that we're at the point where we can talk to each other a bit about what we are reading independently. 




References 

Vacca, R.T., Vacca, J. L. & Mraz, M.  (2011). Content area reading: literacy and learning across
the  curriculum. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

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