Thursday, August 2, 2012

Encouraging Reluctant Readers

Amy in Adventures in Teaching is having a linky party on how to encourage reluctant readers.
My feeling is that reading should be fun and children shouldn't be forced to read (except at teacher's table). I worked in a school where children were yelled at for not reading in the morning. That to me is against what we should be doing. A quick story, both of my daughters are avid readers, they never go anywhere without a book, quite often you'll find them reading instead of watching t.v., etc. Yet they both did poorly on their AR points because they couldn't always find books that interested them.
So, apart from teacher table, I never force a child to read. I give them plenty of choices at the library. We have either library or big books every day at centers. I never have had much of a problem with reluctant readers. I make reading as pleasurable as can be. Reading and big books are the only centers that I don't require a response sheet. I don't want them to think they're working. Usually children get upset when they can't go to one of those centers. I have stuffed toys for them to read to. I have lots of different books for them to read and change the books out often. I don't put a lot of books out at a time. I think this helps.
I did have one child last year who hated my reading materials so when I conferenced with him, he told me that he only liked reading magazines so his mom sent in lots of different magazines and by the end of the year, he was reading my books.
I hope this helps. Photobucket

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