Assigned Text and Motivating Male Learners

The role of assigned text plays a big role in a child's comprehension and learning. Differentiated instruction meets each child at his/her level, works with his/her interest, and it done in response to his/her needs. This includes finding a way to get the learner excited about learning. One way to differentiate instruction is to allow students to choose what they read. If this is not able to occur, another way to differentiate is to provide texts that is of high interest for the child.

When assigning text to male students, their interests must be kept in mind. Having the desire to learn more about an interesting topic will help them progress through the process of comprehension so much more easily. The following ideas and topics are targeted for male readers in grade 5-9:

• Extreme sports: snowboarding, BMX biking, skateboarding
• Wilderness, hunting, hiking
• Bullies
• Al Capone, the mob, the mafia
• Sports: football, basketball, soccer, baseball
• Boogers, guts, bones, etc. :)

Some books boys enjoy are:

• Guinness Book of World Records
• Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan
• Artemis Foul by Eoin Colfer
• Go Big or Go Home by Will Hobbs