Paper Example - Learning and Motivation

According to Kent and Terrence (2016), motivation and learning correlate to a child's success at any given learning institution. It is due to the success factors that parents are always stressing the need to perform well to their children at school. Teachers are said to be contributing to the higher percentage in enticing and motivating the children to learn. Conducting engaging lessons by the teachers is said to have a significant impact in that it makes the kids more motivated, and this creates encouragement to students to overcome obstacles and succeed in their studies. Making the classes more fun and engaging makes the learners more curious, and this allows them to demonstrate where their strengths are.

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Most types of motivation exhibited are intrinsic and extrinsic types. Intrinsic is when the children get motivation from within to read and write. When the teachers are engaging the children using an external force, the motivation is said to be extrinsic. This can be exhibited in the form of a reward or even a punishment. A good example is giving the children free time to play and refresh. Another example could be when a child is asked to remain behind and complete the assignment before joining the others to play. The latter should be applied with a lot of care since the kids would have more fun doing something they love but not being forced to do it. This research will point out on parental activities towards children reading and learning, new technologies to aid literacy learning as well as proposing books to help in children reading and learning.

Activities for Motivating Children to Read and Write

A lot of research has confirmed that motivation is key to any child that wants to become a successful reader. This is because, when a child is motivated, there is consistency in reading, thus assisting them in becoming skilful readers. Different activities can be used to motivate a child to read. Having a read out loud activity with your kids at home is a top strategy to encourage kids to read and write. As the kids develop their hearing aids, they get used to your voice and the many words coming from the trainer. This helps in building the deeper meaning of different words which the kids can write. Storytelling during mealtimes can also assist in developing kids writing, and reading skills. Recording down the kids' stories and putting them down on writings is a very useful learning activity. This gives the kids a real opportunity to see their good stories transformed into writings. Revisiting the written stories assists in strengthening the kids learning of words, the story structures as well as grammar. Prompting the kids to describe any activity they have done, read or even seen also assists the kids in visualizing how they can put the same on paper as they master the correct spellings (Aprile & Alaina, 2016). These engagements sharpen the retaining of the learning activities. It is also useful for teachers and the parents to make their children participate in activities that involve literacy. A good example is engaging the children to assist in shopping list formulation. By doing that, the children can relate with this text and see the role they place in their learning space. Talking about the words the children also recognize assists in sharpening their writing and listening skills. The kids can build sharp recognition skills and understand the words in a context form.

Strategies and guidelines for motivating reading and writing in the classroom

A good teacher will provide excellent guidelines to motivate reading as well as writing in a class setting. There are different mechanisms on how to do this. A teacher should assist the kids in maintaining their success, thus improving self-efficacy. Children need to be supported and encouraged that they are capable of reading well. The teachers can achieve this by guiding the children in repeating tasks until they become proficient, thus improving the need to do practice more and master the keywords. Setting the tasks to be challenging is the best means to foster reading and writing skills among the children. This is because simple tasks tend to be boring, making the children lose interest in attempting them. The act of social motivation is another strategy that teachers use to motivate reading and writing. This is achieved by allowing the children to share reading in groups thus creating unison. Working or discussing together in unison assists the children in creating new words that they easily understand. The opportunities are given to spend time with friends in class as they interact about the aspect of enthusiasm, which is essential in learning how to read and write. Sense of belongings is also achieved by such interactions, thus enabling existing knowledge elaborations.

Family involvement in the activities and current research justification

Parental involvement refers to the active ongoing participation of parents towards the education of their children. Parent involvement in activities meant to improve the reading and writing activities of children have become of great importance. These activities have become a significant challenge to those practitioners that oversee school reforms. The parental involvement improves the students' behaviour as well as affecting students' achievements in an effective way. Parents can actively involve themselves by creating time to read with their children at home. By doing this, their children can grasp some problematic terms that are challenging to pronounce. Helping their children with their homework is also an activity that allows the children to master on how to construct correct sentences that are easy for them to understand. It is also the responsibility of the parents to know the overall behaviour of their children at school. This is achieved by attending events as they are organized by school management. At home, the parents will discuss the events of the day with their children at home. The parents will thus be able to evaluate them using the information given to them by the teachers at school and know how their children are faring in terms of their development and studies. It is believed that constant communication between the teachers and the parents assists in incorporating the parents into the learning process of the school.

The International Journal of scientific and Education Research (Topping & Lindsay, 2007) gives a clear justification for the importance of these parental activities towards the development of children reading and comprehension skills. Research carried out by (Snow, 1991) shows that when a parent and a child engage in any conversation that supports interpretive and constructive meaning, then the full value of reading with the children becomes effective. The oral language mastered from these conversations is what becomes crucial to literacy development. Snow also points out that the link between parents and their children allows them to start telling stories about their personal experiences as well as communicating ideas and information that is ideal to their development.

New Technologies/New Literacies to Teach Literacy Learning

In the current millennium, the normal ways of doing things are changing. How we work, communicate, or even spend our time has changed because of technological revolutions. Technology has, in a better way, affected the way studies are being carried. Teaching is being done in a more technological way that calls for rapid adaptation to be able to grow literacy learning.

Media and Computer Literacy

Media Literacy has being discussed to be gaining a lot of importance not only to the learning institutions but to the whole society. Through media literacy, both the proper and improper behaviours, values, gender roles are learned. Developing media literacy has seen the emergence of both video and film to teach an extensive range of essential topics like education and multicultural understandings (Frank, 1995). Media literacy has also helped in developing more disciplined talents within the society, and this has led to job creations that help in the wellbeing of many scholars. Sensitivity to visual imagery, textual meanings, as well as narrative structures is all as a result of media literacy. Computer literacy has also helped in developing learning and raising the level of literacy from time to time. Computer literacy has transformed the whole learning process from using programs to using multicultural literacy. New computer technologies are being used to conduct research as well as gathering information. Students can now use computers to carry out their research projects and present their discussions with the help of media literacy. Books that can help to create interests in reading:

• The adventures of captain underpants by Dav Pilkey
• Dinosaurs before dark by Mary Pope Osborne
• Laugh out Loud jokes for kids by Rob Elliott
• Diary of a Whimpy Kid, Book 1 by Jeff Kinney
• Grade three books that can help children with special needs
• Happy dreamer by Peter Reynolds
• Willow by Denise Brennan
• What do you do with an idea by Kobi Yomada
• The Big Orange Splot by Daniel Pinkwater
• Grade three books that help in creating interest in cultural diversity
• Calling my name by Liara Tamani
• Love, hate and other filters by Samira Ahmed
• The astonishing Color of After by Emily X.R Pan
• The Sun is also a Star by Nicola Yoon References

References

Benner, A. D., Boyle, A. E., & Sadler, S. (2016). Parental Involvement and Adolescents' Educational Success: The Roles of Prior Achievement and Socioeconomic Status. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 45(6), 1053-1064. Doi: 10.1007/s10964-016-0431-4#

Webster, F. (1995). Theories of information society. London: Routledge.

Topping, K., & Lindsay, G. (2007). Parental involvement in reading: The influence of socio-economic status and supportive home visiting. Children & Society, 5(4), 306-316. doi:10.1111/j.1099-0860.1991.tb00496.x

Deal, T. E., & Peterson, K. D. (2016). Shaping school culture: Pitfalls, paradoxes, and promises. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Snow, C. E. (1991). The Theoretical Basis for Relationships between Language and Literacy in Development. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 6(1), 5-10. Doi: 10.1080/02568549109594817