A Taste of
Honey and Other Methods of Increasing Recreational Reading of Reluctant Readers
By Jill
Jenkins
Motivating
struggling reading is a daunting task, but if these students are to improve
their reading skills teachers need to go beyond the call of duty to make
reading interesting and successful for them. Most schools strive to make
students lifelong learners, but they also need to strive to make students
lifelong readers. To do this, students
must develop habits of reading recreationally.
Below are some tried and tested methods that have proven successful with
some students. Keep in mind each student
is different, so no one method may work with any given student
Read Books With
Your Students to Connect
Teachers are overworked with
planning, correcting and a myriad of unrelated activities, but by reading books
that might be of interest to your students, you’re in a better position to
recommend books to students or discuss books with student thus encouraging them
to read independently. This is means
that as a teacher, you need to read books beyond your interest and comfort
zone. Read non-fiction and technical
books because many teenage boys are especially interested in computers and
cars. If a student recommends a book,
read it. For instance, I had a student
whose mother had informed me was a slow reader and seldom remembered what he
had read when he finished. This is a
common problem with reluctant readers.
If a student can no finished a book within three weeks, the book is too
long, difficult or uninteresting for that student. I noticed the young man was reading Life of Pi by Yan Martel and asked him how he liked
it. He enthusiastically raved about the
book and offered to lend it to me when he finished. I thanked him and said I would get a copy and
we could talk about it every day, so I did.
Everyday, when I stood in the hall outside my classroom, I would stop
him and we would chat about the plot or characters in the book. The young man became an avid reader anxious
to discuss each book with me. His mother
thanked me at the end of the year. To be
honest, the young man didn’t lack reading skills. He needed an adult connection. Most of us are social readers and so are most
students. I know you think that you
don’t have time because you have too many classes and too many students. I was a teacher with seven classes a day and
one advisory period, all filled with 35 to 40 students. Obviously, you can’t read 200 books at once,
but some of your students who will recommend books are the kind of readers
whose parents are prying the flashlight and the book from their fingers at four
in the morning begging them to get some sleep.
These students don’t need any motivating to read independently. They are the racehorses of readers. Let them
run, but the reluctant readers need your help.
Get the Help
of Parents
In my classroom, I always provided my students
with ten minutes each day of silent sustained reading and I told them each day
that it is their favorite part of the day.
Repeating this every day can help them really believe that reading is an
enjoyable activity, but ten minutes a day isn’t long enough to make much of
difference in a child’s reading skill.
Since the Common Core Curriculum is packed with learning objectives,
spending more class time seems unreasonable. Teaching a novel every quarter is
also not enough reading to increase the reading skills, so it is imperative to
engage the help of parents. What do you
do about the student who comes to class unprepared every day? For those
students who never bring a book to class, with my own money, I bought
subscriptions to a variety of magazines that were both age appropriate and
interesting. Because they arrived unprepared, I did not give them full credit
for the activity. Soon all of students
have a book to read in class. I required that my students read two hours a week
or about 20 minutes a night. Some of my
friends required one hour five nights a week.
I encouraged my students to read longer by offering extra credit for
reading four hours a week. Each student
was given a reading chart that needed to be completed and signed by the parent
or guardian and returned in one week. Honestly, I got this form from my
daughter’s 7th grade English teacher and adapted it for my classes. This is it:
Reading
Record
Name ______________________
Zone _______________
Date Due__________
Period _______
___________________________
Book Title
___________________________
Author
Date
Min initial # of pgs
Fri
11/1
|
|||
Sat
11/2
|
|||
Sun
11/3
|
|||
Mon
11/4
|
|||
Tues
11/5
|
|||
Wed
11/6
|
|||
Thur
11/7
|
TOTAL
MINUTES READ_________
*Note
incomplete reading logs will not be accepted.
My son/daughter has read the book
named above (not just watched the movie—if there is one).
__________________________________
Parent Signature
A Taste of
Honey
Students
often don’t have any idea which book might be interesting to them. The library is overwhelming to them. One way to give them an idea is to read
selected passages of the book giving students a taste of honey or a taste of
each book. Select an assortment of books
from the library and either ask the librarian to present these books to your
class or discuss each book yourself with the students, so they have some idea
which books might be fascinating to them.
Another
method is called Speed
Dating. Spread a variety of books
across the room and give each student five minutes before you ring a bell and
the students move to the next book. When
they each have a chance to peruse the books in the room, let them discuss which
books they found interesting and make suggestions to each other. Students helping students is a valuable
resource.
Rewarding
Success
When you
complete a difficult task, you like your success to be noted, so do
students. When students successfully
complete a book, let them put their name and the title of the book on a piece
of paper and hang it on the wall. I use
little cut-outs of suns, clouds, trees and let the student select one. Each quarter I established reading goals for
each student based on his/her ability to read. When a student reached whatever
reading goal established for him or her, he or she gets his picture taken
wearing a crown and has that picture displayed in the library under the title “Reading
Royalty. “ To encourage reading, catch students reading and take their picture,
take pictures of teachers, administrators and staff member reading and display
these on your morning news or on a bulletin board. Most of my students loved seeing pictures of
themselves, their friends and their teachers and it reinforced the value of reading.
Guided Reading
and an Inundation of Genres
To prepare
students for the future they need to be exposed to a myriad of different
genres:
·
Magazine articles
·
Web sites
·
Short stories
·
Novels
·
Non-fiction
·
Technical reading
·
Poetry
·
Speeches
·
Charts and graphs
·
Train and bus schedules
Expose your students to as many genres as you can. The
teacher needs to provide guided reading assignments for each genre demonstrating
how to analyze including, but not limited to:
·
The organization of structure
·
How to find the main idea
·
How to find the supporting ideas
·
How to identify the supporting examples and
evidence
·
How to evaluate the quality of the evidence and
logic
·
How to identify the elements of literature
o
Plot
o
Setting
o
Characters
o
Themes
o
Literary Devices
·
How to Identify text features
In short, the teacher needs to model and guide students to
do what good readers do when they read.
Reluctant readers often do not have a clue what to after they decode the
words. Some students even need help
synthesizing the decoded words into basic ideas.
Write to
Remember
Learning Journals
Finally students need to write to
remember. This means use journals for
student to record what they have discussed.
If you are teaching a novel or an article have the students discuss it
and guide them through the analysis.
Finally have them record it in their learning journal. If they are reading a book independently,
have them read the same book as another student in class or ask the parent to
read the book with the child. After the
two read, give them discussion questions and finally have the students record their
answer in their learning journal. You
will be surprised how much their comprehension will improve after they write
about it.
Creative Projects
Although all writing will improve
student’s retention, more creative forms will also pique their interest. Some that you could use to have students
write summaries of what they have read include:
·
Movies
·
Reader’s Theater
·
Plays
·
Newspapers
·
Web pages
·
Power Point Presentations or Google Presentation
·
Podcasts
·
Children’s Picture Books