Strategies for Motivating Students Book Recommendations by Barbara Meaders

I would like to recommend a few books that I found highly motivational for my fifth grade students this year. The first book is Soup and Me by Robert Newton Peck. This book describes Soup and his best friend. They go through many crazy adventures together. This was a great book for my low reading group. They laughed almost the entire book.

Frindle by Andrew Clements is another book that I gave to my low reading group as part of their literature circle. It describes an elementary school boy who invents a new word for the writing pen. He finds that if he can get enough people to start using the word he can meet his goal of having the word officially recognized in the dictionary. However, he is met by strict opposition from his classroom teacher. My students loved this book. They even decorated t-shirts with a "new "word and acted out an advertisement to the rest of the class trying to promote their new word.

The last book I will describe is City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau. This book was assigned to one of my mid-to-high reading groups as part of their literature circle. The students enjoyed this book so much that they finished the book in one week instead of the three that I had planned for. The book describes an underground city that was created by the Founding Fathers to promote the survival of a civilization from a catastrophic disaster. Doon and Lina are the two heroes that try to unfold the mystery of Ember, save its dwindling electricity source, and find a way of escape.

The results of the two surveys I found showed a differences between among students who fall at different ends of socio-economic status and ethnicity when it came to reading. Generally, students who attended mid to high socio-economic schools had better attitudes toward reading than those who came from schools in low socio-economic areas. Ironically, the majority of students that attended these higher schools were Caucasion. They tended to have a selection of books at home to read and there was high volunteer and PTA involvement at these schools.

• Burlew, W., Gordon, T., Holst, C., Smith, C., Ward, J., & Wheeler, K. (2000) A Study of Reading Motivation Techniques with Primary Elementary School Students. Retrieved from ERIC database.
• Duignan, S., Klioris, A., Porter, J., Rockett, N., & Vogwill, K. (2002). Increasing Academic Growth through Motivating Students to Read. Retrieved from ERIC database.