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As a kindergarten teacher one of my primary learning goals during the year is to teach my students to read. However, learning to read is hard. And humans, in general, do not gravitate towards things that are hard to do. In fact, doing hard things often creates negative feelings. I don’t want my students to think negatively about reading – I want them to LOVE reading. That is why I take intentional steps to instill a love of reading in addition to teaching the how to.
Here’s a few things I do:
1. Model It!
You might not think they are watching or listening but chances are – they are! So, model a LOVE of reading to your students. Let it start from the first day by creating a special place just for books. Teaching them how to care for books and why its important. And when you sound like you really care about books they will too!
Talk to them about your favorite books when you were a kid and maybe even read some of them. I always love reading this childhood favorite to my students.
Talk about why you love reading and the adventures you get to go on when you get lost in a good book. Smile when you read and show the students with your body language that you enjoy reading.
2. Give Lots of Opportunities for Free Reading!
When I say give opportunities for free reading, I’m not talking about providing books at no cost, although that is helpful too. I’m talking about carving out time for students to read whatever they choose. So much of our reading instruction time involves the teacher choosing what to read and what skills to work on. And as important as that is to the ‘how to’ of reading it doesn’t really help build that personal connection to reading in each student. However, by giving students opportunities to read whatever they want to read, even if its too easy or to hard, students begin making personal connections with books and the act of reading. No one likes to be told what to do all of the time – a little free choice goes a long way!
3. Make Reading Fun!
Show students that reading can be fun and special. Sometimes I pull out the googley eye finger pointers for students to read with and other times we pull out the finger lights and do reading in the dark under the desks.
Sometimes we read to our stuffed animal friends and other times we read while wearing costumes or silly reading glasses. These little additions make reading time a special time. We don’t do this all the time, but we do enough that the students look forward to it.
Share Your Ideas
Do you have any special things you do to help instill a love of reading in your students? I’d love to hear about them. Reply to this email or tag me on social media and let’s share some great teaching tips with each other!
