Agency and Interest in the Classroom

No student is the same, so why do some teachers try and teach them all the same way? After listening to the podcast interview between Dr. Rowe and Dr. Baker, I have thought of some ways we can work with the different "agencies and interests" in the classroom. Dr. Rowe refers to "agencies and interests" as the way we think about children and the way they seem to come to school and play and are interested in different topics and things in the classroom. Dr. Rowe works mostly with 2-3 year olds, which is a bit younger than the age group that I will be working with, but I love her idea of finding out the agencies and interests of each and every child to help promote more interesting and fun writing for the student.
Some children love to write, and some can't stand it. How do we make writing interesting? How do we, as teachers, find out the interests of our individual students? I think the best way is to talk to our students. To sit them down one by one and simply just ask what they are interested in. Do they like dinosaurs? Do they like cars? Do they like to play house? Once a teacher finds out their interests, he or she can use those interests to come up with topics for writing. Then, throughout the school year, the teacher can bring in different topics and ideas that are similar so the students horizons broaden and they want to write about more topics. For example, if a student likes dinosaurs, you can have him or her slowly read about how researchers say that birds today are the closest relation to dinosaurs. Have them work with the topic of birds. After that, you can bring them into the topic of birds/mammals/reptiles/etc. These topic changes can go on forever, and if done right, the student will continue to keep interest. The point here is to make writing interesting! When writing is interesting, children will want to write. Children who want to write will build literacy skills without knowing it.
Establishing literacy in each and every child in the classroom is every teachers dream. And establishing this literacy while the students are engaged and interested is something that every teacher wants. Roll that into establishing literacy while what the students are doing is worthwhile, well, that's something that every teacher strives to have in their classroom.

Engaging and Worthwhile literacy practices + every student in the classroom = Amazing