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eSchool News
10 educator suggestions to instill a love of reading in students
These tips and recommendations can help students learn to read, read to learn, and learn to love reading
By Britten Follett
December 10th, 2020
My husband quite often reminds me not to use my behavior as a child OR
an adult as an indicator of others’… because I’m weird. From the moment
I learned to read, I loved it. My favorite winter break was spent
bingeing on every Baby-Sitters Club book in the series. As an adult, at
any given moment, I’m listening to an audiobook and bouncing between
one or two print books. Sometimes I read to learn. But most often, I
read because I love it. But again… I’m weird.
Is it weird? Or did the mere fact I enjoyed access to books at home,
school, and in the public library as a student give me a distinct
advantage? The most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress
(NAEP), otherwise known as The Nation’s Report Card, indicates that
students scoring in the lowest percentiles in reading and math are
dipping noticeably.
Further examination of the results shows a widening gap between the
average reading performance of black and white students. While both are
declining, the performance of black students is declining faster than
white students.
The pandemic demonstrated further equity gaps as students across rural
and urban America still lack access to the internet. In many of those
communities, students couldn’t get to print books from the school or
public library because both were closed–challenges that make learning
to read, reading to learn, and learning to love reading nearly
impossible.
Yet, reading is the foundation of learning. It may be aspirational to
think we can instill a love of reading in every student. So how about
we set our sights on giving students the tools to begin to “like to
read,” or maybe even just not hating it?
Reading is embedded in the culture at one high school outside of St.
Louis, where every student was challenged to read 1 million pages
during their four years. I remember being shocked to walk into that
high school before the morning bell and seeing students sitting on the
floor by their lockers reading. Building that culture took work and
guts. Every teacher allowed for 10 minutes of independent reading that
would have previously been used for instruction. Time to read combined
with the peer pressure associated with the million-page-reading
challenge made reading about more than learning. Those students learned
to love to read.
One-million-pages a student might be a bit over-zealous in the middle
of pandemic-driven remote learning challenges. But we have to start
somewhere…
10 educator suggestions to instill a love of reading in students
Here are 10 ideas educators shared with me that developed a love of reading for their students:
1. Talk to students one to one. By getting to know your students’ likes
and dislikes and building that relationship, you might be surprised
when the “girly-girl” really wants to learn more about dinosaurs.
2. Find the right format. Many students gravitate toward popular trade
titles, but others get excited about audiobooks, graphic novels, and
eBooks.
3. Get students hooked on a series.
4. Read books out loud to students even if they can read themselves!
5. Connect students to stories and characters that look like and share
similar experiences as them—as well as other races, cultures, and
experiences—through books, virtual visits, sites, and online
experiences.
6. Be a reading role model. Students want to see adults who love to read.
7. Bring a book to life! Help students write a script from a book and
have them perform it. Extra credit? Have them create props, sets, and
costumes and present it to another class.
8. Put reading levels aside.
9. Create book trailers! Help students create videos for each other, promoting their favorite books.
10. Build a culture where reading is cool!
Perhaps using some – or all – of these ideas can help our country move
the needle toward improved reading scores, literacy, and above all, a
love for reading. And that is not weird.
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