Encouraging reading

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High School English Teachers Chatboard

Encouraging reading

by Kate

Sep 3, 2012

What are some methods you use to encourage students who don't like to read or think reading is uncool to do the assigned reading? I would like to get them interested, rather than consistently having to penalize them for not doing the work.

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Vet Teacher On 9/03/12, Kate wrote: > What are some methods you use to encourage students who > don't like to read or think reading is uncool to do the > assigned reading? I would like to get them interested, > rather than consistently having to penalize them for not > doing the work.

Great question. I find my students who don't like to...See MoreOn 9/03/12, Kate wrote: > What are some methods you use to encourage students who > don't like to read or think reading is uncool to do the > assigned reading? I would like to get them interested, > rather than consistently having to penalize them for not > doing the work.

Great question. I find my students who don't like to read are weak readers - they read poorly and with effort - and/or they have short and challenged attention spans. Reading is almost a painful process for them and it certainly isn't that cozy pleasure that it is for the students who read well.

The reading is 'uncool' is a front for their feelings of shame and embarrassment that the simple task of reading isn't simple for them at all. Over many years of teaching, I've realized my school day does not allow me to do one on one tutoring for reading and that's pretty much what the weak and seemingly reluctant readers need.

Shy of that, I try to make a classroom environment that allows kids to say aloud they don't like to read. What's wrong with that? We all like different things. I don't like to do math. I like science but I hate doing a science lab. For years in my life, I was just plain too tired to read while my kids were little.

I let them say they don't like to read but I balk at letting them also say they don't like books. How would they know if they don't read??

I rarely read fiction. I respect the great writers and the great classics but I don't read much fiction at all. My own ADHD personality reads non-fiction better. What's wrong with that? I tell my students that I don't love every book and that I have too much restlessness to read much fiction - I need the reinforcement of thinking 'this really happened'.

I also talk about all of us reading at different speeds just as all of us run at different speeds. I tell them I want a classroom that's inclusive of all diversities including the diverse kinds of readers we have in the room. I make all our books available on tape and bend over backwards to make audio recordings available. I give over class time to do the reading. I choose my short stories to be palatable - I want them to be 'grabbed' and I let them know it's ok to hate a short story or hate a book. I talk constantly about what I read and why I like it. I read aloud a fair bit too - mostly excerpts and I can choose excerpts (like the scene from Fahrenheit 451 where she's about to light the match) that can cause an entire class to hold their breath.

I don't penalize for not doing the reading simply because - it doesn't work. If penalizing them got them to do the reading, then fine but here that doesn't work. Many of us here are assigning books and short stories that our weak readers can't possibly read and that's one huge reason why they don't do the reading.

Get earphones and let them listen to it on a computer - they can read along with the text on the screen and listen to it being read.

Sep 3, 2012

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