Bringing Life Back Into Reading

In 6 Assumptions That Were Killing Reading In My Classroom from  @DavidGeurin Blog,  David Geurin asks,

“How do you bring life back into reading for your students? What practices do you need to lay to rest?”

I love to read and would love to turn my students on to reading! I feel reading is the key to all things! I remember my third grade teacher, Miss Sims (I still remember her - not bad for an old lady!) and how she encouraged my love of reading. I want to be THAT kind of teacher for my students.

I want to learn my student’s interests and try to find books that might interest them about that topic.

I want to offer students a variety of books to read and these books need to be on several different reading levels.

I want to have ground rules for my class such as no one makes fun of anyone’s reading or their reading level. Everyone will encourage others to read and celebrate the completion of reading a book.

I want to give them time to read even if it is only for 10 minutes.

I want to give book talks and talk about some books that some of the students might find interesting.

I love to read aloud to my students and they seem to enjoy it too. This is a great way to model reading for them. I’m also excited that all ages of students seem to enjoy this.

I want to give students the opportunity to share information about a good book they read or tell why they didn’t like a book.

I want to give some rewards for completing a book and sharing about it.

Practices that I dislike are forcing students to read aloud before a group. I dislike giving students only one way to share about what they have read because I think having choices is important. In elementary and middle school, I believe that students should have choices about books they want to read.

How do you encourage reading? What practices would you like to see end? Please share.