Reading is, without a doubt, a profoundly rewarding activity. The habit of reading can be inculcated in children at a young age with greater ease. Once the love of books has been cultivated in children, it will stay with them throughout their life. But to make this possible, teachers have a significant role to play. Teachers are always in search of ways to motivate their students to read.Here we talk about a few methods teachers can use to encourage students’ interest in reading.
Read to your students
One of the best ways to encourage your students to read is to read to them. After you are done with a day’s lesson, read an interesting book to your students, instead of grading papers or sitting idle. To arouse the students’ interest, and to finish off the book during the class, you can choose to read a short story book. After this, discuss the book with the children. Get to know their views about the book. How many of them found the book interesting? What was it that they like about the book? Would they like to read other similar books by themselves?
Assign reading tasks
Regularly assign reading tasks to your students as a part of their homework. Choose the books that you think most of your students will find interesting. Make sure not to discuss the book with the students at the time of assigning the task. Instead of arousing curiosity, doing so might take all the fun out of the book.Once the students are done with the reading, you should now discuss the setting, plot, genre, or characters in the book with the students. Try to make this discussion very interactive, and let the students be fully involved. Don’t ignore the students who haven’t been able to complete the book, or are not participating in the discussion. Ask for their feedback; get to know what it is that they didn’t like about the book.
Let the students choose
Apart from assigning specific books to read, assign tasks in which students are allowed to read any book of their own choice. But make sure to firstintroduce your students to a plenty of different genres and themes of books. Try to make a wide collection available in your classroom library. Studies have shown that one way to inspire a lasting love of reading in children is to let them make the choice of books they are going to read. Because it is a fact that every student will not like all kinds of books. Letting them make the choice also boosts their reading ability.
Discuss the importance of reading
At times, only knowing the benefits of something can lead one to develop good habits, and make better life choices. In order to make the students appreciate reading as a fruitful activity, it is highly important that the teacherspresent before them the innumerable benefits of this activity. Teachers should schedule class discussions on the rewards of reading on a regular basis.
