Motivating Reading

Before I begin I have a request from a teacher at a mission school in China. They are using Accelerated Reader in the mission school and have a number of the SDA books in their library. These books do not have the quizzes. She has heard that some schools have prepared quizzes for these books and would like to contact someone who can help her. If you are that someone, please let me know and I will put you in contact with her.

One reason schools might consider using AR is to help students become better readers. I haven’t used AR and I checked their website. The main reason for AR is to determine whether or not a child has read the book. I understand that a student chooses a book and reads the book, then takes a quiz on that particular book. If a book does not have a quiz, teachers can create custom quizzes. However, this takes time and many teachers may not choose this option. As with all programs there are pros and cons to it. If your school is considering AR, I would encourage you to research the program and see if it fits your needs. Many schools may decide to forego AR simply because of the cost of quizzes.

If you want to motivate your students to read, one of the very best and cheapest ways is to have SSR – Sustained Silent Reading. Some schools call this “DEAR time” for “Drop Everything And Read.” I can hear some of you saying right now – “I already have SSR.” Wonderful! For those who don’t have SSR, here is what I did in my classroom. I first put it on my schedule so it had a specific time and I treated it like a class. Second, I never asked students to do reports or school assignments on the reading that was done in SSR. Third, students were not to read school assignments during this time; only recreational reading. And lastly, but most importantly – I read silently during this time as well. I modeled the behavior I wanted from the students. I did not grade papers during this time, or do other desk work that needed to be done. I read my book while they read theirs. We all read. Silently. It was usually our favorite time of day. In my third grade classroom, I started the year with 5 minutes a day for the first week, then increased the time to 10 minutes for about two or three weeks. After a couple of months we were reading for 20 minutes a day. At the end of the school year, all my students were reading six months to a year or more above grade level and nearly all of them liked to read. I personally loved the time reading and would read my professional books at times, but usually I read books that they might like. Often I would giggle softly at a part, then after the silent reading time was over, I would share the funny part. That strategy usually got kids reading MY book, too. I really do encourage you to start SSR and make time for this every day. I promise you will see reading improvement in your students.

Another way to motivate reading is to have a contest. You can choose to have a personal contest or a school-wide contest. I like the school-wide contest where the whole school wins a reward of some kind if a particular goal is met. The goal could be a number of pages or number of books. You can keep track with any kind of device. The ever popular bookworm, apples on a tree, bricks building a wall, gumballs in a large machine, let your imagination soar.

One of our middle grade teachers challenged her students to see if they could read forty books this year. She has certain guidelines set as far as what books are allowed, but the only recordkeeping is the bibliography information on an index card and a sentence or two describing the plot so they could remember it more easily. The students seem to be enjoying the challenge and are reading a lot.
If you have ways that you motivate students to read, I’d be happy to share them with others. Please let me know if you have any questions. I enjoy hearing from you.
Have a great week,
Audrey