Increasing Situational Interest
Increasing Situational Interest
Offering meaninful choices to students in the classroom is essential for increasing situational interest. When students are able to make choices about their own learning in the classroom it will increase their interest in the learning. Being able to make choices about which texts are read, for example, will make students much more interested in the text because they were able to choose it. When students are able to make meaningful choices in the classroom, it satisfies their need for autonomy and taking control of their own learning experience.
The next suggestion given by Schraw, Flowerday, and Lehmon is to use well-organized texts in the classroom. When texts are more user-friendly, they help to maintain students' interest much more effectively than complex and confusing texts. Teachers must also give adequate background information on texts being used in the classroom and connect the information to students' lives in order to create situational interest and maintain situational interest. Providing background information before the text is read in class creates interest before the text is even introduced.
Selecting texts that are vivid and inviting is of utmost importance in creating interest for students. When texts are vivid with such components as rich imagery, suspense, surprising information, and engaging themes, it has a positive impact on student interest. When texts contain irrelevant information or are lacking in imagery and vividness it can interefere with student learning. Teachers must be precise and intentional when selecting texts for the classroom and must keep in mind the components that trigger student interest.
According to Schraw, Flowerday, and Lehmon, prior knowledge is positively related to interest. Therefore, we must either provide pre-reading information (background information) to help students better comprehend the texts that are being learned, or we must select texts whose content is familiar, but not highly familiar to the majority of students. If we provide background information before reading a text then it will create student interest in the content of the text before it is even read. Similarly, when we select texts whose content is somewhat familiar to most students but not highly familiar, then their interest is already triggered because of prior knowledge and they consequently want to learn more about the topic because of their triggered prior knowledge.
Encouraging students to be an active participant in their learning, rather than being passive majorly increases interest. According to Schraw, Flowerday, and Lehmon, active learning increases interest, and interest increases active learning. We can help our students to become more active in their learning by introducing specific learnings strategies such as predicting, summarizing, questioning, and by using general study strategies such as a KWL chart. By modeling to students how they can become more active learners through the use of these strategies, it will increase their interest in the content and their own learning process.
One of the most difficult jobs as a teacher is trying to show students how the content is relevant to them. If we can help students understand what is relevant to the task or learning activity before it is done, then it will increase student interest and learning. Giving the content meaning and relevance is of utmost importance in triggering student interest.