Encouraging Reading in Children

Encouraging children to read is something very special that you can give them. How to do it is the question but this is not a trouble, we only have to find the best way starting with sharing our ideas in this blog explaining the best way which each one has found in schools. 

Do you want to help me? Let´s explore!

Well, I am going to tell you some ideas that I have learnt the last three years during my Teaching Training Degree and I want to share with you some of these ideas that I have taken from the schools where I did my Practicums.

During my first Practicum, I learnt the way of encouraging reading in a class of 2^nd Cycle of Primary Education which consisted of making a drawing and put it on the wall to record the number of books each pupil read.

In this case the drawing was the sea with many waves to represent the number of books each pupil was reading during the entire course. Each pupil had a little octopus with their name representing them as the readers.

In class the teacher made a small library with books from the pupils of the class. They had to bring at least 1 book the first week of the course which he or she knew very well, so this pupil was “the expert” of this book, and everybody could take a book from the library to read it. Once a student had finished to read one book, “the expert”, ie, the owner of the book, did a small questioner to him/her in order to check if he or she had read the book or not. If she or he had read the book, this girl or this boy could stick on the drawing of the sea his/her octopus. And so every weeks, going forward into the sea as they advanced in reading.

As you can see in the picture, some of the octopuses were out from the sea while others were in nearly 10 books already read; this means that some students had not read any book yet.

My opinion about this activity to encourage reading in Primary Education is that, on the one hand, students have the opportunity to read free books and an extra mark depending on the number of books they read, also you can check how many books they read, but on the other hand, probably some students read quickly without understand the book at all, only to win the race to be the best reader of the class not as a pleasure. Moreover I think this idea is not fully developed, is good but I miss something else.

What do you think? Do you think is it a good idea to encourage reading? Do you suggest anything else to create this activity fully developed?

However, this year we are learning new technics to encourage reading with Raquel, in which motivation is worked in other way, because it is not important only to praise pupils who read more (such as I think could happen with the previous activity), we are learning this year that it is possible to make readings and to use literature in a different way motivating students to take books from themselves after.

For example, one way to encourage reading in a Primary Classroom is using Storytelling performing the story. Another way could be using Rhythms to pronounce some words because we must not forget that they are learning a foreign language at the same time.  

In my opinion, it is also important to read aloud to children and also to be a role model to children, but the most important things are starting with topics that children love and make the reading social between them.

Now, have a look at this video and watch the strategies that they propose to us.

Do you have any other ideas to encourage reading in a Primary Classroom? 

Did your schools any creative activity for reading?

Thank you for sharing it with us, because it could be very useful in our future as teachers.

Nuria