Helping students to read is one of the greatest challenges teachers encounter. Beyond the basics of alphabet memorization and word recognition, how can teachers muster up the motivation needed to influence students towards recreational reading?
In Bean's Making Reading Relevant for Adolescents, I learned that only 25% of high school aged students say that they enjoy reading for fun. Reading, as we know, is one of the best ways to establish strong foundation for content understanding as well as enhancing a students' curiosity in learning; readers who struggle with understanding a certain subject and do not enjoy recreational reading will further exacerbate their struggles by neglecting this activity. However, I noticed in this article that many students enjoy independent reading when the material is reflective of their own personal interests. For example, Jessica- a young sixth grader mentioned in Bean's article- writes in a journal to express her feelings on paper, and also reads recreationally in books that interest her. Jessica is bored by her teacher's framework though, and this gives heed to a newly adapted necessary approach in teaching literacy.
In my classroom, and in this article, various reading activities may be used to enhance and engage a student's motivation to recreationally read. Activities such as: reader's theater, graphic organizers (ie; Venn diagrams), and dinner party may be wonderful techniques to influence students towards reading for content and for fun. Teachers must find a way to incorporate more motivational tools into their curriculum and daily lessons so that we can instill a love of reading in all of our students.
In Donna Ogle's interview responses shown in The Challenge of Content Area Reading, she often mentions the need to teach students how to be more strategic readers. In middle and high school grades, students who struggle with reading skills are often unclear on how to improve their own technique. These are changes that need to be made in classroom to show students how to find motivation in purpose in the content they read.
In these higher grade levels, many teachers feel that they are more of an expert in their subject rather than just a teacher of students. This disconnect gives students a lessened opportunity to excel because the teachers already assume some understanding that the students many not have. Teachers should begin to include active reading (eg; markings in margins, highlighting) to help student notice more significant vocabulary and/or content while learning a specific subject.
Reading is one of the most basic and yet one of the hardest things taught in schools. By motivating students to read recreationally and for their own interests, we may enhance the tool that is literacy in all our school systems. Reading can be a defining resource in showing a student the love and curiosity of learning in a classroom, or anywhere.
