Motivating Students to Enjoy Reading, and Hopefully Keep it Up!

Introduction

     As hinted in the video above, it’s very easy for schools to accidentally suck the joy out of reading books by making it an assigned task for marks or to accidentally program into the reader that reading books is only a school activity: a task for marks. So, my question of the day is: “How can teacher-librarians motivate/encourage students to want to read books for fun?”

     To answer this question, I searched for articles with the keywords: foster, encourage, motivate + reading + school + librarian. I also reflected on my own life experiences, asking myself how it is that I still read for fun and have somehow not been programmed to stop whenever I’m not a student. To compete with television programming and video games, which engage multiple senses (visual, auditory, and sensory for video games), I searched for articles that factored in the multiple ways books could also engage a student, landing on articles that used conversation, writing, and performing as strategies to engage and motivate students to read books.

Encouraging Reading and Writing Through Readers’ Theatre

     In High School, part of my engagement with reading was through theatre. On paper, William Shakespeare’s writing could seem bizarre, obtuse, and too lengthy, but that’s largely because it works best when performed. As a young preteen, I would see “Shakespeare in the Park” in Vancouver. I found that I didn’t have much trouble following it because I could read the actors' body language and verbal expressions. In High School, I even stayed out in the freezing cold, bundled in two pairs of pants, three sweaters, and a sleeping bag to watch 4-hour Shakespeare plays with my drama class, on more than one occasion (in Ashland, Oregon), and loved it every time. I was also engaged to read stories because some teachers encouraged me to write stories. I was fortunate enough to have had my creativity fostered and linked with stories.

https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/blog-posts/genia-connell/readers-theater-fluency-comprehension-and-engagement/

     Kathy Latrobe writes about an activity, called “readers theatre”, that engages students’ creativity and story interaction through adapting a scene from a book into a script. The adapted scene should have: a) dramatic appeal, b) a limited amount of characters, all captivating, c) rich, figurative language, d) a beginning, middle, and an ending, e) not spoil the book for other readers (so, no plot twist reveals), and f) it should “be representative to the tone of the entire work.” Kathy then details the acting qualities to teach students, such as communicating emotion, understanding the context, acting when not speaking (listening), using small gestures and facial expressions, and to not practice too much so as to keep the performance fresh. This activity also has the benefit of connecting to some of BC’s curriculum, such as communication (to the audience and through group work), creative thinking, critical thinking (selecting the scene and adapting it to work better as a script), and helps with students’ reading comprehension, and helps with their writing skills. Kathy also adds:

     And teachers and teacher-librarians may use readers theatre to introduce a set of works by a single author or with a single theme or in a single genre. Reader theatre can be the basis for interdisciplinary partnerships (eg. linking historical fiction with social studies or science fiction with science).

Briefly, other techniques

     Readers' theatre is just one way to engage and motivate readers. Other articles I found suggested strategies such as story debates (Mirra), and book discussions through book clubs, discussion groups, or amongst the whole class (Pittman). One article suggested that if students believe they are good readers, that literature is present through all curricular areas, and that if students see a purpose for reading, then their engagement and motivation for reading increases (Berry). Another article suggested that if libraries kept their stock diverse and current, motivation to read increases; this article also says that their selection of 40 diverse books are free to schools (Gerald).

Conclusion

     To help encourage and motivate students to read, teacher-librarians could have scripts available, adapted from scenes from books, for students to perform, or they could collaborate with a classroom teacher, introducing the writing and performing techniques portion of the readers' theatre activity, while the classroom teacher provided in-class time for students to write and rehearse. Teacher-librarians could also encourage and/or supervise debate or book clubs, keep their books current and diverse, and keep an encouraging disposition when talking to students.

References

Berry, Laurie Eva. “Engaged Reading in Third Grade: A Magical Kingdom.” ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2000. 

Gerald, Diana. “It's Not a Book, It's a Doorway: A Look at New Research into the Impact of the BookTrust School Library Pack and Its Role in Encouraging Reading for Pleasure.” The School Librarian, vol. 64, no. 1, 2016, p. 14-16.

Kimmel, Jimmy. “Can You Name a Book? ANY Book???” YouTube, YouTube, 17 May 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJdNrCeUdhc.

Latrobe, K. “Encouraging Reading and Writing through Readers Theatre.” Emergency Librarian, vol. 23, no. 3, 1996, p. 17–20.

Mirra, Nicole, et al. “Reading and Writing with a Public Purpose: Fostering Middle School Students' Academic and Critical Community Literacies through Debate.” Journal of Language and Literacy Education, vol. 12, no. 1, 2016, p. 1-22.

Pittman, Pamela, and Barbara Honchell. “Literature Discussion: Encouraging Reading Interest and Comprehension in Struggling Middle School Readers.” Journal of Language and Literacy Education, vol. 10, no. 2, 2014, p. 118-133.