Student Interest

“Do I have to leave?” “I can’t wait to learn more!!” These are the things we want to hear our students say when they are in our classroom. It is a given that if students are interested in the content, they will be more motivated to learn it. We want our students to be excited about what they are learning. Sousa and Tomlinson (2011) state that “Attending to student interest in a classroom suggests a desire on the teacher’s part to capitalize on those things a student cares about in order to facilitate learning” (p. 113). 

Imagine it is the beginning of the school year and you want to get to know the interests of your students. Using SurveyMonkey (be sure to register for a free account), design a survey with 10 questions to gather knowledge about student interest. Post the link to the survey and then respond to the following questions:

• How might you use the survey results to differentiate your instruction based on student interest?
• What if a student on a survey stated that they did not like mathematics, but they loved football? How might you draw upon their football interest to motivate the student during math instruction?
• Reflect on a time when you were given an assignment that you had no interest in completing. Consider how that teacher might have differentiated the activity based a personal interest and describe how this relates to one of the seven themes of addressing student interest in the classroom found on page 116 of our text.

Use the text to support your opinions.