ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the connection among interests, motivation, and learning. It uses an interest survey to identify each student’s top two interest topics and clusters. The chapter identifies two ways to utilize students’ interests during regular classroom instruction. It helps the readers to keep accurate and efficient records of student conferences. Educators often take for granted that they know what student interests are. Equally important, educators recognize that student interests are usually so low on their teaching radar, with so many other things to do, that teachers often overlook them. Paper copies and/or digital copies need to be filed and stored away so that they can be referenced during the individual and small-group conferences that will be part of the interest focusing discussions, the next step in the IBL process. Students’ interest information can also be used to inform classroom instruction in many ways, and we are delighted to suggest a technique that has proved successful in our classrooms.
