Addressing the Lack of Attentiveness and Motivation Among Elementary Students through Classroom Reading Program

I. Statement of the Problem One of the prevailing problems teachers encounter nowadays is the lack of attentiveness and motivation among students. Based on the observations of students performance in school, it is very evident that large number of elementary students shows insufficient efforts to excel in each subjects settling for what they know is good enough without striving to give their best efforts. Along with this, one can rarely see an elementary pupil holding and reading books and other reading materials. During classroom discussion, a significant number of students cannot comprehend well showing inattentiveness. In this regard, we thought of addressing the lack of attention and motivation by establishing a comprehensive classroom reading program and monitoring the performance of students by using different measuring standards. This is because we can highly see a correlation between motivation and attentiveness and reading since a pupil who can take time to read stories once in a while shows a making of a patient, well-motivated, persevering pupil in the future.

II. Review of Related Literature A. Factors affecting students lack of attention and motivation Initial upbringing. Students can be caused by the way these kids are brought up and the environment where they were raised. An environment which favors good-enough alternative may cause these kids to settle for what is okay than to look for what could be the best for them. It can also be induced by the values instilled in them. Students who easily give up and rejects challenges may be the ones who exhibit apathy. When the parents are not interested in the success or failure of their children, the child will not care about school or lessons, and will perform poorly. Financial status. The most important factor for the lack of interest on part of a student is the financial situation of his family. There are some students, for example, who

think even if they pass the exam, their families will not be able to find the money needed for their daily school needs. Apart from this, some students have to work after school; as a result, they cannot concentrate on their studies. Students perception. Another thing that may influence the way students act is their perception about schooling. When the difficulty of the lessons is added to this list, school becomes a nightmare for these students. B. Benefits of reading to students learning Reading builds concentration skills. Reading also helps to build concentration and attention skills. No matter what you want to do or become, you cant do it without more knowledge. Reading is an excellent way to get where you want to go. Reading builds vocabulary. Remember in elementary school when you learned how to infer the meaning of one word by reading the context of the other words in the sentence? You get the same benefits from reading a book. While reading books, especially challenging ones, you will find yourself exposed to many new words you wouldnt be otherwise. Reading helps self esteem. Another one of the key reading benefits is that the more you read, the more knowledgeable you become. With more knowledge comes more confidence. More confidence builds self esteem. So its a chain reaction. Since you are so well read, people look to you for answers. Your feelings about yourself can only get better. Reading improves creativity. Reading about the diversity of life and exposing yourself to new ideas and more information helps to develop the creative side of the brain as it imbibes innovation into your thinking process, perhaps the best reading benefit of all.

III. Solution To address this problem, we have come up with a three-staged reading program. This said reading program will be composed of: oral reading, oral interpretation/retelling and vocabulary and comprehension. In these three levels, various skills shall be developed, measured and monitored.

A. Oral reading All of the students will undergo a weekly oral reading exercise by reading different kinds of stories. In this level, the teacher shall monitor the reading speed of each student by counting the number of words uttered in one minute (words per minute/wpm). In addition, the teacher shall look into common errors in reading such as mispronunciation, omission, repetition and improper phrasing. The data collected shall be compared to the previous data in order to monitor the progress of each student. In this way, we can address the common errors of students in reading as well as their speed and develop skills as this reading program progresses. B. Oral interpretation or Retelling After the oral reading, the teacher will randomly select a good number of students (3-5 students) to retell or summarize the whole story. In this level, sequencing skills of students will be enriched. Second, this level will also develop the students skil ls in sentence construction and grammar usage. In addition to this, this will test if the student fully understands the passage. The whole class is also encouraged to share their own insights and develop a discussion about the story. This will build an interaction among students by sharing their own ideas. In this way, the critical thinking skills shall also be developed. C. Vocabulary and comprehension A reading program will not be complete without having a vocabulary and comprehension tests be it multiple choice or in the usual question form. In this level, the students ability to critically think and understand the paragraphs will be honed. This will also help students to understand the meaning of different questions. The vocabulary of students will also be enriched in this level. The students will be able to distill necessary information from reading passages. They will be able to figure out what they need to look for in the text to get the right answers. Moreover, having a good range of vocabulary adds richness to your speech and allows you to communicate more effectively. Building an educated vocabulary will leave people knowing exactly what your message was and not with just some vague idea. The results of the tests shall be recorded and compared to the previous results to monitor the progress of each students level of comprehension.

IV. Conclusion Indeed, there is so much to learn with just simple reading. The benefits can range from fixing common errors in reading such as mispronunciation, improper phrasing and omission to learning and understanding to use new words to correct sentence building. However, the benefits do not only rest to academic-related or literacy-related skills of students but it also go beyond that. Students will also learn the values of patience and concentration and attention skills. Because of this, we therefore conclude that this proposed three-staged reading program can address the prevailing problem on the lack of attentiveness and motivation among students during class hours.