inquiry project 2 assessment 2

I was not happy with my first assessment on motivation. I felt like, how could I have found two things (reading and tadpole catching) this child is supposed to enjoy and not be able to motivate her? What I decided was that the reward for doing the work, tadpole catching, was too near to her to allow her to focus on the task at hand. I felt like I was taking someone who was starving and asking them to do a difficult task in a crowded restaurant at dinner time. I decided to create a setting more conducive to learning, so this time I took her to an elementary school classroom to perform my assessment. My plan for this assessment was like the first assessment in that she would be involved in studies related to reading that didn’t involve reading whole books, given a break, then resume with actual reading. My motivation if she showed signs of mental fatigue and frustration this time was going to be an offer for ice cream on the way home. What I found was similar to the first assessment in the beginning, she was motivated and ready to learn and looked forward to the first break and the opportunity to play on the playground. What I was surprised to find was that after break when we went back to reading she was still highly motivated to read. The project this time was more than just reading the book, as it had been the previous time. This time we were discussing how to find the main theme or idea of the story. To do this we used a dry erase board to create lists of important things to remember and consider. I let her take control of writing and making the lists, this seemed to be the biggest motivator to her. I, for the sake of comparison started her with a book she had already read and then moved to a book she had not read. With the first book she easily identified what the main idea was and was able to explain how she came to that conclusion. With the second book we started by using the same strategies she had used to identify the idea of the first book. We looked at the title and the picture on the front of the book and made our guess. The pleasant surprise was that the story was not fully reflected in the title and cover art. She had to inspect each drawing and draw new conclusions about what was being said. This change in strategies didn’t slow her down, in fact she was excited to learn of the new connections that could be made from the details of the artwork. We ultimately changed our opinion of the main idea of the story while learning the lesson that you can’t judge a book by it’s cover. I never did have to offer her the ice cream to get her work done, the ability to actively participate and make suggestions to the answers were enough to keep her going through the end of the work.