Interest Inventory Results

I gave my whole class an interest inventory to avoid pointing out my struggling student. A link to the interest inventory given is in a previous posting, but the results were interesting.

My struggling student has two brothers, one older and one younger. She listed several friends under her "special friends" and mentioned liking playing outside and watching T.V. Her favorite hobbies were to "help neighbors". She had several favorites she listed including "meet molly" as her favorite book, "broken bridges" as her favorite movie, "miranda lambert" as her favorite singer, "drake and josh" as her favorite t.v. show, "pasta salad" as her favorite food, and "gun powder and lead" as her favorite song. She wishes she could have a big ballerina in her room and claims school would be better if it had a pool and a hot tub. If she had a million dollars, she would buy everything she could. The think I have done that she liked most was helping her in math. The thing I have done that she liked the least was talking a lot.

This information could be very helpful when planning instruction for this struggling student. While she doesn't struggle behaviorally, she does seem to struggle academically at times. Perhaps allowing her to use her interests in the classroom would help her be more engaged and understand the concepts taught more. I have a hard time seeing this being helpful in math class, which is the only setting I see these students in, but I can see how it would be very helpful in language arts. Also, knowing she doesn't like when I talk a lot could help me individualize instruction for her. I know that some talking is necessary, but for her I need to back off of discussion so much and let her work with manipulatives instead of sitting and listening so much.