Fostering a Love for Reading in Children
Fostering a Love for Reading in Children
By Russ Walsh | Original article on Russ on Reading | Russ Walsh is the author of A Parent's Guide to Public Education in the 21st Century: Navigating Education Reform to Get the Best Education for My Child | Buy on Amazon, Barnes & Noble | Twitter: @ruswalsh
By Russ Walsh
An article in Education Week Teacher caught my attention. The article "Four Steps to Building a Magnificent Classroom Library", by primary grades teacher, Justin Minkel, offers some solid advice for making sure your in-class library is an effective resource for your students. The first three steps are "Increase diversity", "Match books to student ability", and "Make time for reading." All good ideas, thoroughly explained.
The fourth step that Minkel identifies calls for the teacher to "Build a love of reading." This is critical, of course, but aside from acknowledging its importance, "our job isn't just to teach kids to read, but to do whatever we can to make sure they love to read", Minkel offers few recommendations for how to make this happen. Access to lots of books in a well-constructed classroom library is a good start, but what else can a teacher do to foster that love of reading?
1. Be a Reader
In order to foster young readers, teachers must model how much joy reading brings to them personally. I like to think of teachers as living a literate life that includes reading for personal pleasure, reading books that may be of interest to their own students (to know what to purchase for the classroom library), and reading professional journals and books for personal professional development. Teachers should also take some time to share with students, talking about what they are reading, so that students get a picture of the adult in the room as a literate person.
2. Read Aloud Daily
What better way to share the joy of reading with children than by reading a good book aloud to them every day. Read aloud must be a regularly scheduled part of reading instructional time, not just a special treat or as a cool down exercise after recess, but as a celebration of the rich rewards contained in a good book well-read. Teachers must prepare for read aloud by reading the book and practicing reading with proper fluency, expression. and intonation. I wrote about The Need to Read Aloud here.
3. Provide Lots of Time for Reading in Class
In his article, Minkel highlights time for reading, but it bears reiterating here. Time crunches, test pressure, and over-packed curricula have put the squeeze on instructional time in school, but it remains critical that children have time to read independently and extensively during the school day. You can read my thoughts on this topic in this blog post: Independent Reading: A Research-Based Defense.
4. Conduct Regular Book Talks
As classroom teachers, we have tremendous power in shaping our students' reading interests. One way to use this influence productively is through the book talk. In a book talk, the teacher shares a book that she has read and that she thinks may interest some of the students. The book talk shows the children the book, names the author, and tells the students just enough about the book to whet their appetite and help them know if it may be something they want to read. Book talks may also include a brief read aloud of an interesting passage from the book. Book talks are short and don't give away the endings of books. I recommend book talking several books a week. I set aside 10 or 15 minutes on Monday mornings for book talking. After talking about the book to the kids, I just let them know they are available to be borrowed and leave them on my desk to be perused. They usually disappear by the end of the day. Librarian Nancy Keane offers some tips for book talks here.
5. Encourage Talk About Books
Kids should be encouraged to share what they have read through talk. Independent reading time might end with a turn and talk where students partner up to share what they are reading and "what stood out for them." Teachers can hold mini-conferences with students during independent reading and invite students to, "Tell me about what you are reading." When students finish a book they nay be invited to do their own book talk about the book for their classmates. Talking about our reading with others improves our comprehension and reinforces the social nature of reading and constructing meaning.
6. Help Kids Get Books in Their Homes
One of the most important reasons for having an excellent classroom library is because we know that access to reading material is critical to the development of lifelong readers. Just as important for creating these lifelong readers are books in the home. Teachers can foster reading in the home by making sure that children get regular trips to the school library to borrow books and by encouraging parents to use the resources of the local public libraries to borrow books. Some teachers set up their own classroom libraries as lending libraries, so that students can also take these books home.
Research by Richard Allington has shown that simply getting books in kids hands over the summer helps counteract the effects of summer loss. Many homes do not have rich literacy resources. School activities that would contribute to getting more books in the home would be extremely worthwhile. Profits from book fairs and other activities might be directed to making sure that vulnerable readers get a few books of their own to take home over the summer.
Teachers can do much to foster a love of reading in their children. Like all worthy learning goals, this instruction must be planned, intentional, explicit, and persistent. Most importantly, it must grow out of the joy the teacher herself gets out of leading the literate life.