"When students are actively reading and applying multiple reading strategies as they read, they are able to understand the text at a deeper level."
Getting Students Excited About Reading
There are so many ways to get students excited about books! Here are just some ways to promote reading in your class:
Read Alouds
Display Books in the Classroom
First Chapter Fridays - Read the first chapter of a book, and then raffle it off to students interested in reading more.
100 Book Challenge - For every 15 minutes of reading, a student can log it. If it is read in the class, a teacher can sign in. If it is read at home, a parent can sign it. Create a visible chart in class to show progress throughout the year. Give students stickers for every page completed. Here is a copy of the log you can use with your class.
More Great Ideas to Use This Year
Reading Buddies
Pick another class in the school and make a date once a week or once a month to join classes and have students read to each other.
Epic Books
Epic Books has a library of 40k+ books for kids. If you have a tough time updating your classroom library, this is a great site to complement what you already have.
Class Story
Give the students characters, a setting, and a problem on the board. Students will each have to write a complete sentence and then pass it on to the next student to continue the story
Seven Strategies of Highly Effective Readers
Activating - Tap into prior knowledge. Think about a time you went camping before reading a camping book.
Inferring - What do you think the book is going to be about? What do you think is going to happen next in the book?
Monitoring/Clarifying - Refer to #2 - Were you right? What happened that was the same/different than what you thought?
Questioning - Have students read questions or come up with their own questions. Why did the character do that?
Searching/Selecting - Refer to #4 - Were you right? Find it in the text where the question was answered.
Summarizing - What is a short summary of the characters, the problem, and the solution in the story?
Visualizing/Organizing - This is the fun part. Have students think about the information or theme they learned in the story. They will then apply it in a creative activity that includes writing, crafting, drawing, or anything else you can think of.
