When teaching middle school ELA, teachers are presented with students with a wide range of reading skills. You may have gifted readers absorbing multiple books a week, while others may avoid reading altogether because they still struggle with basic reading concepts.
How do we tackle this? Where do we even start? Well, our number one job is to inspire a love of reading first. If students find reading to be fun—something that sparks curiosity, answers questions, offers a pleasurable escape—then they will pursuit it.
So, if you have struggle readers in your class, let’s go back to basics. Let’s go back to the very foundation of reading and instill a love for it.
Here are 10 ways to get your struggling readers to fall in love with books.
1. Introduce interactive books
This is huge! Can you guess the biggest reason why middle school students hate to read? Boredom! One surefire way to eliminate boredom from a text is to make it interactive. Find books that physically appeal to the five senses and literally force the student to actively participate in the story. Consider books that contain:
- maps
- pictures
- spaces to write
- puzzles
- quizzes
- games
- choose your own adventures
2. Offer a variety of texts and genres
Speaking of the five senses… it is important to offer not only a variety of genres that you may study as a class but also a variety of texts. Although much of our classroom learning is pushed into laptops these days, don’t skimp on providing physical copies of texts too! Hand out actual magazine articles. Put newspaper clippings on their desks. The variety of physical textures (the smooth glossy paper vs. powdery ink), visual arrangements (columns vs. essay), and voices (blog vs. scientific) will add new excitement to reading assignments.
3. Host classroom library parties
Update your classroom library at least twice a year. You don’t have to completely revamp the whole thing. But maybe you update one of the genre shelves. Maybe you rotate the books to feature some new favorites. Maybe you show off a new classroom set of a novel.
Always ask the parents and caregivers to help contribute to your classroom library! Once it’s updated, host a party and have students do a book tasting with the newly added books.
4. Let students choose
We are required to hit so many standards and analyze texts as a class, but don’t forget to offer assignments that allow the students to choose what they read. And this doesn’t always mean having them choose a book for silent reading. Consider offering two texts for an assignment and allowing students to choose which one they’d like to analyze.
5. Organize mini book clubs
This was one of my favorite activities that I did with my students when I was teaching. And it’s really quite simple! Each quarter, I would choose a genre and list 5 or 6 books within that genre that the students could choose to read. Then I grouped the students based on the books they chose. Each group would contain 3-4 students. As a group, they would figure out how many pages they needed to read that week and once a week, during class time, the students would discuss the book together.
The point of the book club—in order to make reading more fun for non-readers—is that it provides a reading community. It encourages the struggling readers to participate and engage with their peers. It’s similar to the way people like watching movies together. It’s fun to simply experience it together and consider others’ thoughts on the story and characters.
6. Provide time for alone time
Book clubs are awesome… but sometimes we all just need a little alone time. It is really hard to provide time in your short class period for silent reading, but try as you might! Here a few ideas in how you might be able to incorporate it into class time:
- Replace bellwork once a week with silent reading time
- Encourage students who finish work early to read silently
- Use it as a reward (have a silent reading day if students do X, complete Y, behave for sub)
7. Create a reading “space”
Create a cozy reading space in your classroom. This may mean making “time” for reading in your classroom (as suggested in the previous point) or making a physical “place” for reading in your classroom. If you can provide time for reading, make it special by playing rain sounds and dimming the lights a bit. If you can provide a comfy reading corner, add twinkle lights, quotes, or comfortable seating. By doing either of these, you are showing your students that reading is an important part of your routines, and not just an afterthought or simply a requirement.
8. Celebrate reading role models
YouTube is a great ELA teaching tool today, especially when it comes to playing popular speeches. Try to find YouTube videos or interviews of your students’ favorite role models sharing their favorite books.
9. Require library cards
This one can be tough, especially since most school media centers don’t offer physical library cards, but do you remember how excited and proud you were to receive your first license? A library card can’t get you behind a wheel, but there is something fun and official about it. Can you connect your students to your local library to get them library cards? Maybe you can make library cards for your own classroom library?
10. Make story time a thing
Do not underestimate the power of story time! Do not think that just because you are teaching young teens that they are over story time. Reading aloud to children has been shown to have numerous benefits for their brains. Try doing First Chapter Fridays or reading a novel as a class. And hot tip! Save your voice! Rent the audiobook or find the audiobook on YouTube.
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