An Assessment of Attitude

September 4 - 7

This week I administered two reading attitude surveys to my students. The purpose of these two surveys was to get an overall idea of my students’ perceptions and feelings toward reading. The first survey I gave was the Garfield Elementary Reading Attitude Survey. I created the second survey, which consisted of eighteen multiple choice questions and ten true/ false type questions.

The results gleaned from these surveys were as anticipated; some students absolutely love to read, and others despise reading. It is my goal to improve these students’ attitudes on reading and to instill a love of reading within them.

I was surprised to learn that a large majority of my students do not read outside of school. However, this may be a result of my school’s low socioeconomic status and predominant Hispanic population. Many of my students’ parents do not speak English, or cannot read English, which may contribute to the lack of literature in their homes.

In hopes to improve my students’ attitudes toward reading, I will incorporate a variety of texts into daily lessons. I will use comic books, poems, magazines, newspapers, songs, non-fiction, fiction, and chapter books throughout my Small Group Reading instruction. Like most teachers, I want my students to look forward to reading and learning what’s going to happen next in a text. Through my use of dialogue journals, hands-on manipulatives, and narrow reading, I hope to accomplish this goal!