Independent Reading Project: Creating a Museum of Living Literature

Motivation is the key to supporting and advancing the learning of children and young people within my class. Motivation affects the nature of an individuals behaviour, the strength of the behaviour, and the persistence of the behaviour. There are many approaches to motivation: physiological, behavioural, cognitive and social. It is the crucial element on setting and achieving goals.

Teaching theories are as much part of the classroom as the student and the teacher. The effect individual theories have on an environment depends how they are incorporated within the classroom in addition to the influence they have had on the curriculum construction. This essay will briefly look at how motivation theory, cognitive and social cognitive theory along with constructivism have impacted on education and the classroom.

My English Literature major has helped me to achieve an outstanding level of appreciation, enjoyment, and knowledge of both American and British Literature. As a high school AP English student, I struggled through great works like Hamlet and To the Lighthouse. My teacher’s daily lectures (there was no such thing as class discussion) taught me merely to interpret the works as critics had in the past. I did not enjoy the reading or writing process. As a freshman at Loras, I was enrolled in the Critical Writing: Poetry class. For the first time since grade school, my writing ability was praised and the sharing of my ideas was encouraged by an enthusiastic and nurturing professor. Despite the difficulty of poetry, I enjoyed reading it.

Every english class includes dreaded assigned reading, and students get used to the treacherous act of mandatory reading and analysis. However, there eventually comes a novel that pushes the limits of commitment and causes students to question why they took the advanced placement course, such as William Faulkner’s Intruder in the Dust. More often than not, a student’s motivation to read assigned reading is quite low, but Faulkner’s writing creates a whole new level of desperation to avoid the novel. The complicated sentences and common themes Faulkner uses create a difficult reading for anyone, especially unmotivated students.

After taking honors English for the past three school years, I now want the challenge of taking a higher level course: AP literature and composition. At this point in my high-school career, I’ve been able to take three advanced classes, and I want this class on my belt as well.

One of the most essential aspects of the educational process is to know how to motivate students for learning. A challenging part of being a teacher is to know and learn how to motivate students. First of all, a good definition for motivation is as Byrnes quote “Motivation is construct

This essay originally titled Studying Literature in Grade 12, has an abundance of information regarding and convincing the readers that the grade twelve English course should be composed of Canadian literature. The grammar in this essay however, was weak. The subject did not agree to their pronouns, making many sentences awkward. Overall, improvements could have been made. Some of these include MLA format, the title, introduction paragraph, grammar, punctuation and the citation format.

Coming from CP World Voices to Honors English II pushed me to work hard as a result of my fear of falling behind. However, the jump made me grow as a writer; my strength in analyzing literary texts grew and so did my love for the literary works we read. Because this class pushed me to become a more focused and serious writer I have experienced many pivotal moments that caused me to become more aware of my strengths and weaknesses. Looking back on the work we have covered this year I have concluded that my pivotal moments were a series of realizations that came in intervals. Close to the beginning of the year, I discovered that I enjoyed understanding and analyzing literary works to the smallest detail. To successfully do so I focused on my

The 11th year of school, junior year, is considered the hardest year of most people’s academic life. The junior year can be very confusing and hard to prepare for due to the high skill level classes, the SAT test, and the ACT test which all can decide the acceptance into any kind of college. The author of “10 Ways to Survive 11th grade” gives practical and beneficial advice for any student preparing for this formidable year.

Reading has never been my strong suit. While, I enjoy it, I’ve always had difficulty understanding what I am reading. This year, I started out pretty average with the grades that I received during our reading units. I got an 80% on the final unit test for Romanticism, an 80% on The Scarlet Letter test, and an 80% on the Dark Romanticism test. As the year progressed, my skills with reading comprehension increased. Once third quarter started and we began reading The Great Gatsby, I started to consistently receive 100% on quizzes, but on the final test, I still ended up earning an 80%. I was able to receive the higher grades due to more discussion in class, and also watching the movie to review as well. The thing that helped me improve in my understanding of books the most, was our in class discussion that we had. In these we were able to talk about things we were confused about, and ask questions to further understand the passage. These also made me more inclinded to think about a book more critically than I had before. After we read The Great Gatsby we entered into our Contemporary Fiction Unit, where I chose to read Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell. While this unit focused more on writing, I was only able to do so well on the written responses and our final paper because of how well I was able to comprehend the book. I couldn’t have done this without learning about literary movements and increasing my skills in reading comprehension. One of the things that I enjoyed the most about the Contemporary Fiction Unit was how we compared the modern book that we chose with the literary movements that we learned about this year. While doing this, I was able to find traits of Modernism and Realism in Rowell’s writing. It’s intriguing to see how these literary movements that happened, in some cases, years ago, are still influencing books that are written today.

This type of motivation is influenced heavily by rewards and external incentives. It also implies the notion that “I have to do something” in order to be compliant with what someone else wants me to do. It is a motivation that is primarily influenced by the hope of attaining tangible items such as prizes, special privileges, or money. Although Drive implies the heavy use of Motivation 2.0 by the corporate world, Pink also draws attention to the fact that schools typically operate under this mode, as well, and that it can have detrimental effects on our students and on learning, in general. Motivation 2.0 is also referred to in the book as the “Carrots and Sticks Approach”, and although it may yield positive results in the short-term, the repeated or incorrect use of extrinsic rewards can actually work against what educators are trying to achieve in terms of truly motivating their students.

“A & P.” Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Ed. X.J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 10th ed. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. 16-20.

I majored in English in the Humanities and Social Sciences college at Rowan University. At the same time, I studied a number of courses in the discipline of secondary education. I enjoyed studying teaching but early in my undergraduate career I determined that teaching English at the high school level was not my desired life path. Rather, teaching English Literature as a professor was my life's purpose. As an undergraduate, I have taken a deluge of class varying from children's literature to Toni Morrison studies in an attempt to further understand literature. Concentrating on the ways in which modern literature apprehends the American experiences within the written word. At the point of graduation, I accomplished a

One of my most defining traits is being very analytical to what I am passionate about. I feel that critical thinking and analysis are some of the most important skills someone can have in this world today. The ability to look at everything presented to us critically: whether it be our own pop culture, the people around us, the events happening in the world, the social situations close to us, or the crucial decisions you make every day, can lead us to making better judgements by thinking about things with more complexity and understanding. I want to teach high school English for sophomores and seniors, because I feel that those are the most formative years during high school. For sophomores because that’s when they start forming their identity as a young adult, and for seniors because that is when they are about to leave high school and enter the adult world. Those two points in high school feel like the most crucial times we should be teaching literature to high schoolers, as an appreciation for literature and analysis can be very beneficial for students who are grappling with difficult questions and ideas about themselves. The lessons we can learn from literature and the critical thinking skills they would gain through analysis can help benefit the students and help them process the difficult changes they might be facing.

Since the previous response to course material, we spent a lot of time discussing one particular work, The American Dream, learning the vocabulary terms and even beginning to apply them, and learning how to analyze specific literary techniques likes tone and mood. Furthermore, we even practiced AP multiple choice in both prose and poetry styles.