Motivating Readers

Recently I had a discussion with one of my colleagues about how can we motivate our students to read. Needless to say, we were both feeling a bit discouraged about the willingness of the children's desire to read on a daily basis. After much thought about the subject, I began to ponder some of the ways that I have tried to inspire our young readers to read, from implementing the "Get Caught Reading campaign to providing seasonal reading challenges. Yet sadly, many of these initiatives have been met with apprehension from our students.

Research has shown that students are motivated to read when they feel a sense of accomplishment that often leads to increased motivation to continue to pursue more challenging tasks. When a child does not have a sense of accomplishment with a task, they are often resistant in participating or continuing to engage in it. Teaching students how to choose books that are "just right" and allowing them to choose the kinds of books they want to read has long been the gateway to enabling students to become more engaged readers. Likewise, reading aloud to students enables them to see how effective readers interact with text and essentially use reading strategies to comprehend text. Moreover, creating a classroom environment that is literacy rich allows children to see the value in being or becoming good readers.

If you are still embracing the challenge of creating life-long readers, here are a few simple ideas that you can try. I sincerely hope that you are still in the fight, after all, without literacy, we have nothing to build a foundation on!