have a critical role in supporting or thwarting students’ autonomy in the learning context. An effective way to improve the teachers’ role in supporting children’s autonomy was found to be holding professional development workshops for teachers. The findings of Reeve, Jang, Carrell, Jeon, and Barch (2004) showed that giving teachers one informational session on how to support student autonomy was effective in supporting children’s autonomy. However, there have been no “effective autonomy-supportive professional development programs” which “explicitly focused on the promotion of reading motivation” (De Naeghel et al., 2016, p. 235). Hence, there is a need for conducting such professional workshops with teachers that aim to promote children’s reading motivation, which this study sought to do. Studies indicate that autonomy support relates to the needs of competence and the relatedness. Engaging students in activities that satisfy their autonomy leads to enhancing their competence, which in turn increases their enjoyment (Black & Deci, 2000). Guay, Boggiano, and Vallerand (2001) studied which needs affected the others, and their findings indicated that satisfying students’ autonomy leads to increasing intrinsic motivation, which in turn enhances student competency. With regard to the need of relatedness, Ryan (1992) argued that autonomy and relatedness are not as antithetical as previously thought; they are complementary and they support each other. This means that the need of autonomy, in some way, supports both the needs for competence and relatedness, which are discussed next. Need for Competence It is necessary here to clarify exactly what is meant by competence. Deci and Ryan (2002, p. 7) define competence by stating that it, “refers to feeling effective in one's ongoing interactions with the social environment and experiencing opportunities to exercise and express one's capacities”, in order to get desired outcomes (Deci & Ryan, 2002, p. 7). Another definition of competence is “the need to interact effectively with one’s environmental surroundings” (Reeve, 2012, p. 104). The need for competence has been studied in different contexts. In the educational context, the need for competence is basically the student’s need to understand the school work in order to support the individual need to experience a sense of effectiveness (Stefanou et al., 2004). White
Roaa’s mother reported her daughter’s change in reading, and her eagerness to share stories: She started to write and to love reading. At home, she tries to read everything written on the boxes of juice and cakes. In addition, she has started to join letters to each other. Her personality has changed; she becomes quieter than before as she seems to think more. She keeps asking about when is the time for reading a story. Sometimes, I have just returned from the school and want to get rest, and then she comes and asks me to tell her a story. Towards the end of the project, I asked Roaa, ‘What do you like to do?’ She answered, ‘I love the Art Corner, and I love playing with my friend here (moving to the Family Corner). I love the Library Corner. I love the Mosque Corner’. Reetal Reetal is four years and two months old. She lives with her parents and a younger sister. Her mother is a nurse who works in a hospital, her father is an interior designer. The family’s average monthly income is £3000, which is considered middle-income family. The parents made little effort to support Reetal’s reading before the project, as Reetal’s mother said: Once a week … from my imagination. I usually look for any mistakes my daughter made, and then I tell her a story about another girl in order to adjust her bad behaviour. Before the project, I observed Reetal for three weeks. Overall, in all observations Reetal spent time in the Art Corner, and she was also interested in reading stories in the Library Corner. She reported that: I love drawing very much. I like playing with my friends. I love reading stories. In addition, in one of the field notes: Reetal went to the Art Corner. She decorated the hand that was given to her. After that she went to the Family Corner to cut her friend’s hair. She looked for two
aware than before. Reading has impacted her greatly and positively … She has started to care about reading much more than before. When she is drawing, she writes letters and keeps asking about anything that she does not understand. I feel that her mind is getting bigger. She is excited about things and eager to read. I made a special library for her containing more stories than before implementing the project. Sahad Sahad is four years and eight months old. She lives with her parents and two brothers. Her father is an accountant and her mother is a housewife, and the family’s average monthly income is £1000. The family is considered a relatively low-income family. Before the project, Sahad’s parents did not support reading at home, as her mother said: ‘No, they kept watching TV in their free time.’ However, after the parents’ workshop, Sahad’s mother started reading every day, as reported: ‘Yes … daily’. During my observations in all three weeks before the project, overall, Sahad was more interested in the Family Corner and the Art Corner. In the classroom, she regularly visited these corners. She did not visit the Library Corner, except one day under the teacher’s request. She had been there for three minutes watching her friend and then she left. An example of one observation is as follows: At 9:00, Sahad chose to work in the Art Corner, doing a triangle. She left the corner at 9:08. Looking around, the teacher asked her to go to the Library Corner since it was not busy. Sahad went there and watched her friend for three minutes. Then she moved to the Writing Corner. She pasted images on a page. Then she moved to the Family Corner, playing with her friends until 10:00, the end of the ‘Free Play in the Educational Corners’ time (Field notes, March 2014). I noticed changes in Sahad’s choices of activities in the classroom. She engaged much more in literacy-related activities than before the project. In all the observation sessions she visited the Library Corner, reading from an iPad and books, as observed: At 9:30, Sahad went to the Library Corner, chose the story of the day, and read it through the text and the pictures from the beginning to the end. She highly
he was saying the letters loudly. Then he chose to listen to the same story in the English language. The chose to listen to ‘The Little Tiny Boy’ until the end. He said to his friend beside him, ‘look at this’, and continued concentrating on listening to the story from the beginning to the end (Field notes, April 2014). Baseem enjoyed playing different activities in the story sacks. Baseem opened the butterfly story sack. He wore the butterfly, chose the big story and read it, took the small white board and drew a caterpillar (Field notes, May 2014). Baseem enjoyed interacting with the teachers in reading aloud. In the reading aloud session, Baseem happily interacted with the teachers. He imitated the characters’ movements, and answered the teachers’ questions (Field notes, May 2014). With regard to change in reading habits at home, Baseem became interested in all texts around him and eager to read stories: He has come to read more. In addition, I noticed something new: when he finds anything written, he calls his sister and asks her to read it to him because she knows how to read. He sits beside her and says: ‘Read to me, read to me’. She gets annoyed by his repeated requests, and he gets upset and complains of his sister by saying: ‘Mother, she does not want to read it to me’. He wants her to read to him even what is written in the streets or presented on the TV screen. At the end of the project I asked him, ‘what do you like doing?’ He answered: ‘I like the Art Corner, Library Corner, iPad, these stories’ (pointing to the story sacks). ‘And there’ (pointing to the Family Corner). Wafaa Wafaa is three years and five months old. She lives with her parents and two siblings. Her father is a businessman and her mother is a teacher, and the family’s average monthly income is £3200 which makes them a middle-income family.
Towards the end of the project, I asked Sufana, ‘What do you like doing?’ She answered (pointing to the story sack): ‘I love to play there with stories and dolls. I love the iPad. I love to watch stories. I love stories, and every day I see it. I love drawing there (pointing to the Art Corner).’ Fares Fares is three years and three months old. He lives with his parents and four siblings, and he is the youngest. His father works in another city and comes home at the weekends and holidays. His mother works as a secretary. The family’s average monthly income is £1,500, which makes the family relatively low-income. Fares’ parents supported his reading before the project, as his mother reported: I did read but not much... Once in two week… from a story that I already knew from my head. In the three weeks of observing Fares before the project, he took part, overall, in different activities except reading. For example: In the beginning, Fares chose to visit the Family Corner to do his haircut. He left the corner at 9:20 to go to the Art Corner to paint his hand’s shape. Then at 9:40, he moved to the Mosque Corner, and at 9:55, he went back to the Family Corner (Field notes, February 2014). During the project, I noticed that Fares went to the Library Corner often and participated much more in literacy-related activities. In the Library Corner, Fares was more interested in listening to stories on the iPad, as shown in my field notes: Fares entered the Library Corner at 9:17. He took the iPad and concentrated on reading stories on the iPad. He listened to, “My friend, the Hours,” “The Little Tiny Boy,” and then to “Planet War.” He listened to all three stories on the iPad from the beginning to the end. At 9:40 he moved to the Family Corner (Field notes, May 2014).
Comprehension The example of Reetal in the previous not only demonstrated her enjoyment of the reading experience, but also her comprehension as she followed the story events in the same order as the book when re-enacting the story to her parents. This suggests that story sacks could increase children’s comprehension of stories, see Figure 5-2 Reetal successfully managed to complete the ‘Ordering the Story Cycle’ by her-self. This point underlines the significance of children making links between stories and experiences in their own lives (Barron & Powell, 2003). Figure : Retaal Completed the Activity. The scaffolding of teachers to engage children with story sacks played an essential role in enhancing children’s comprehension, as I observed: Daniah opened the ‘Eid Gift’ story sack, picked up the story pictures and tried to put them in the right order. There were eight pictures. The teacher sat beside Daniah and asked her, “Did you read the story?” Daniah said, “No.” Then, the teacher suggested that she read the story first and then try the ordering activity again. Daniah started reading the story aloud, looking at the pictures, after which she started ordering the story events. She managed to do the first three events correctly, but the fourth one was not in the right order. The teacher asked her what happened in the story after the character had a shower. Daniah answered, “She combed her hair.” The teacher replied, “Excellent”. Daniah finished ordering the story events, with some help from the teacher. Then she said, “I will do it by myself now.” She mixed up the pictures and started again, and this time she managed to order all the events correctly. (Field notes, April 2014) It is clear that the teacher provided scaffolding to the child to solve the puzzle because, at the beginning, the child could not order the story events correctly without the teacher’s assistance. She could not work out how to do it on her own, but with the teacher’s scaffolding she had a much clearer idea of what to do. Also, peers have a significant role in providing scaffolding to other children to enhance comprehension, as seen during my observation of Roaa:
This in itself may have been a motivating factor in encouraging the children to read and indeed read cooperatively. Finally, having a borrowing system for books was very successful in encouraging children to take books home, which will be discussed in more details in Section 5.3. Impact of Adding Puppets on the Promoting of Reading The teachers added two different kinds of puppets to the Library Corner: main story characters and domestic animals. Holding a puppet while reading increased the children’s enjoyment, as shown in Figure 5-4, as I observed the following: At 9:15, Roaa put the bunny puppet on her lap, chose “Doll Story” on an iPad and read it to the end; then she chose another story. While reading, she was trying to bring the bunny’s ear closer to the earphone, to make it listened to the story with her. Then she chose the “Alphabet Story” and while she was reading it she hugged the puppet and said, “I love this bunny.” (Field notes, April 2014) Figure : Roaa Holding a Puppet Placing the bunny on the children’s lap during reading may provide them with a sense of companionship, which may satisfy children’s emotional needs. Children were motivated to read a story if they had a puppet of the main character of the story, as I observed (see Figure 5-5): Yazed went to the Library Corner and placed a Barney puppet on his lap; then he chose the “Barney” story. He read the story from the beginning to the end. (Field notes, April 2014) The data suggested that adding the story’s main character to the Library Corner may have made the child feel more connected to the story by bringing life to it, which may have increased motivation for reading the story.
This aligns with SDT theory, which suggests that providing optimal challenges can increase children’s feelings of competence (Deci & Ryan, 1985b), since children tend to seek to engage in challenges which in turn support their intrinsic need to be competent (Deci & Porac, 1978) and to have belief in their abilities to master those challenges and feel competent (Hardre & Reeve, 2003). The data showed that optimal challenges seemed to increase children’s competence in reading. This is consistent with Turner and Paris (1995) who found that challenging tasks motivate children to read more. When learners test their personal competence by facing an optimal challenge as part of the task experience ‘flow’, they give the task their full attention and it maximises their cognitive processes (Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Flow is “a state of peak enjoyment, energetic focus and creative concentration” (Csikszentmihalyi, 2000, p. 231). There were numerous examples of this aspect of SDT. For example, providing optimal challenges in the story sacks activity supported the children’s need for competence. The data show that the teachers provided optimal challenges when they planned and designed the story sack activities, as was evident from this informal group discussion: Researcher: Why did you choose these five stories to make the story sacks? Teacher Lolo: … We tried to choose some stories that are easy, some a bit more difficult and one that is more advanced. Researcher: How did you determine how difficult the stories were? Teacher Samha: We looked at different things in the story to help us choose. The easy stories have more pictures, less text, the story events are basic, not complex. The more advanced story we chose has more text and the story is a bit more complex with more events. You can see [pointing to the stories on the disk] ‘The Five Friends’ and ‘The Caterpillar Khaddorh’ are easy stories, ‘The Eid Gift’ is more difficult, and ‘The Lion and the Mouse’ and ‘Squirrel’s Kite’ are more advanced. Teacher Sana: “… we tried to design the activities with a range of difficulty, taking into account individual differences between the children. For example, you
al-asnan Estfan Fe hadeygat alhaywanat In the Zoo Olof and Lina Landström Bo wa Ba fe alhafla Bo and Ba in the Party Almaref karboosh alqet asageer Scribbley the Ktten Jarir Bookstore Al-kit wa aljaras The Cat and the Bell Koleen Ha ana Barney Here I am, Barney Dar Alshrooq Al-alwaan Colors Dar Alshrooq Alma'a Water Jarir Bookstore alhaywaanaat albareya Wild animals Sheril Birk Barney le wahdy Barney is Mine Jarir Bookstore Haywaanat almazra'a Animals in the Zoo Zeina Zain leman takoon hatheh Who Does this Belong to? Zeina Zain Ayna a eysh Where Do I Live? Konela Folda ako lama yamrad Lama's Brother Gets Ssick Emily Bomon lamia talab daor altabyba albaytaryah Lamia Plays the Role of Veterinary Doctor Tony Wolf Bondg Hazelnut Khalid Miqdad Haya nadwo Allah kma almna rasool Allah Let us pray to Allah as the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) taught us