Nurturing and Raising Love of Reading

Nurturing a love for reading starts with providing reasons for reading and getting students excited about books.As a classroom teacher, nurturing a love of reading in students is almost an obsession. Here are ways to nurture a love of reading in children.

Thinking and talking about reading. Well we will only do things that we enjoy doing or feel are worth it. When kids have a intimate and positive reading experience -- one in which they learned something or felt deeply engrossed in a story -- guide them to name those positive experiences. It is no exageration to say they need to think and talk about the experience, to mentally register the positive impact, as this may motivate them to repeat the activity.

Benefits of Listening to audiobooks. Many then are the benefits we can glean from listening to audiobooks. We should aside the mechanical skills we need to read and just focus on plot, characters, and accents; we can lose ourselves in a story. For struggling readers, this is a treat. This is one way to promote occasional access to age-appropriate texts and to get them hooked into reading.

Generate reasons for reading. Well we aren't going to do something we don't see a purpose for doing. When we think of engaging kids in thinking about why they're doing something, the more chances we have of increasing their investment. When I taught middle school, at the beginning of the school year, I always did an activity called, "Why Read?" I asked students to generate as many reasons as they could think of for why we should read. It was fun. I challenged each class to come up with more reasons than the other classes (a light, competitive element generated sixth-grade energies). We kept these up on the wall all year.

Generate joy about words. Thing you can do when reading with kids, identify a word or two per reading session that you can get them excited about, a new word, one that they might, or might not, want to use.This works wonderfully find the joy in discovering a new combination of sounds, of a word that precisely describes a feeling or place. Then, repeat it aloud, and use it in different ways. Just play with it, and have fun. Don't identify too many words per reading session, just one or two will do. Reading is all about words.

Read same books over and over. Kids love hearing the same book over and over. As kids get older continue this practice . Give older kids permission to read books again and again. Ask them what they're experiencing as they read the book again: What new insights do they get from the story? How do they see things differently? What did they appreciate this time?

Ask kids what they think. Don’t be afraid to ask kids how you think you could nurture their love of reading. Engage them in this process as an active participant. For older students ask your students what gets them excited about reading, what makes them love it.

Talk about the story to Kids. Teacher knows when during the story to stop and talk with kids about what's happening. Talk about the characters. Ask them to make predictions. Ask them to make connections. These are all basic reading comprehension strategies, but they are also strategies to get kids more deeply engaged in the reading.

Teaching kids how to read and reading levels. When a teacher began teaching sixth grade, she undertook a three-year action research project about how she could nurture a love of reading in her students. One of the unexpected findings she arrived at was that she needed to make sure she was explicitly teaching her students how to read. Appreciating narratives, words, character development, or whatever she learned from nonfiction texts wasn't enough. Her children wouldn't love doing something that was really hard. She had to make sure she knew their reading levels and that she helped them fill the gaps in their reading skills.

Model being a reader and how it enriches your life. Teachers and parents: read in front of your kids. To strengthen your skills talk about reading. Talk about why you read. While teaching make connections between your life and the world and things you've read. Often as a teacher model how reading enriches your life -- maybe through your ability to read recipes, or to assemble a piece of furniture, or to research a question on the internet.

Students Take fieldtrips related to reading. Its the time of the year when students go to the library for a field trip, (or go on the weekends, parents). Go to a bookstore just to hang out and browse the books. Our goal as teachers is to walk around and talk to kids about what you're seeing in the library or bookstore. What calls your attention? Which titles? Which book covers? You can ask them what they notice. Read the backs of books. Get excited. Flip through books. Wander into a piece of section you'd never go to. You can send kids on a treasure hunt: find a book about stamp collecting, find a book about ancient Rome, find a memoir by someone with whom you have something in common.