Journal #19    Motivating Students to Do Quality Work

By Bob Peterson

     The author Bob Peterson highlights a scene of the importance of students not only keeping portfolio, but encourages them to do quality work. He motivates a group of fifth graders from Fratney`s two-way bilingual program. The results though better, were still uneven, some students excelled and others had little to show. Moreover, despite attempts to encourage students to reflect on their growth as learners. Students can start to see themselves as learners and in charge and responsible for their own learning, a sharp contrast to their traditional role of completers of tasks and recipients of grades. After years of student exhibitions they were more motivated in doing their work and more reflective in analyzing it. The challenges of students taking the extra effort were worth it.