Reading and content area teachers alike face the formidable task of motivating reluctant readers. While certainly a challenge, this is also an incredibly rewarding endeavor. By using specific strategies and encouraging students to develop metacognative skills, teachers can lift students' self-confidence and pave the way for improved comprehension that will benefit all classes. Here are some tips teachers can immediately implement in their classroom.
Help Students Learn to Self-Assess
If students can understand why they are having trouble reading, they will be better equipped to surmount the challenges they face. Teachers can distribute a brief inventory to help students better understand why they have difficulty reading. This reflective inventory may include the following questions and can be tailored to the content of a specific class. The goal is to get students thinking about their reading habits.
- Does the reader re-read the same sentence several times without concentrating on the meaning?
- Is the reader easily distracted, or does he find his attention wanders while reading?
- Does the reader underline, highlight or make notes while reading?
- How does the reader think about the text while reading? Does he stop to ask questions?
- Does the reader preview content or gain background information before reading longer texts?
- Does the reader read when tired or just before going to bed?
In addition to understanding why they struggle when they read, students must learn to self-monitor their understanding and assess their progress when reading a book or discussing a passage in class. Teachers can easily facilitate this process by asking students how well they understand a passage using a simple four point scale. Students can raise four fingers if they feel they thoroughly understand the text, three fingers if they are comfortable with it, two if they are unsure, and one if they are confused. This class-wide quick check allows students to stop and consider whether they are grasping material. Just as importantly, teachers can use this assessment to gauge when it is time to pause for discussion and clarification.
Encourage Students' Natural Curiosity with Journaling
One way to elicit deeper questioning is to require students to maintain a reading reaction journal. This can provide a non-threatening venue for students to express their concerns and confusions as well as ponder details in the text, ask questions, and make predictions. The journal can be set up as a dialogue between student and teacher, student and characters, or student and self. Teachers may choose to assign topics for this journal or simply require students to write in it after reading, for example, each chapter in a novel.
In order for this tool to successfully motivate students to read and enhance learning, the teacher should set specific guidelines and provide a rubric to students explaining how their journals will be graded. For instance, teachers may want to grade mostly on content and organization of ideas rather than grammar or spelling. Whatever the expectations, the teacher must communicate them clearly to her students in advance so that students can proceed accordingly.
Foster Students' Love of Reading
Teachers have a powerful role to play here, as there are so many to incite appreciation for literature. To begin, teachers should serve as a model by sharing excerpts of what they are currently reading for pleasure, introducing powerful quotations and asking students to react to them, and reading silently with students during designated in-class reading segments.
All content area teachers should consider maintaining a classroom library. Teachers can pick one book each week to introduce to the class, reading the back cover, about the author page or an excerpt from the book aloud to the class and encouraging someone to check it out. Where else might students find access to obscure science fiction novels than in the classroom of a passionate science teacher? All teachers should consider themselves reading teachers; if they work together towards a common goal of fostering a love of learning and a love of reading, students will grow in leaps and bounds.
Teachers must be reminded of the profound impact they have on the students in their charge. Helping students develop an appreciation of reading is an important goal that will resonate with students throughout their lives. Students need to learn how to assess their own understanding and their own progress in order to become better readers. Maintaining a reading journal will encourage deep thinking and creativity as well.
Thadra Petkus - Thadra Petkus is currently a freelance writer, English teacher and mentor. Although she has taught students from age two through ...
