How to Get Kids Excited to Read

How do we ensure that children learn to personally value books? 

How do we help children enjoy a constant flow of books into their hands, growing them into effective and fulfilled lifelong readers and learners? 

These may sound like simple questions, but they are good ones for educators to ask.

Adults’ answers don’t resonate

Most everyone agrees that children need to learn to read and write because reading and writing are the bedrock of literacy–humans' way of communicating with each other, of understanding and being understood—and that in turn establishes a means for lifelong independent learning.

Traditional literacy education focuses on teaching children to read and write partially so they can score well on grade-level literacy assessments. Assessments are important to educators who use results to refine curricula with the goal of increasing reading proficiency.

This all makes sense…to adults. But kids work to get better at whatthey enjoy, and becoming lifelong learners and improving test results typically aren’t high on their list.

Kids read for fun

Kids’ reasons for choosing to do things grow from their perspectives, so it follows that effortless early literacy grows from the joy that children experience in immersing themselves in delightful stories and encountering exciting books about the world and beyond. That’s why children who are avid readers—those who choose to read books that they happily self-select, talk about, and share with others—consistently score higher on reading assessments than their peers who don’t get to select their own books and are given no time or encouragement to relax and read them.

If we teach children to develop and pursue their own reading interests and talents, to seek out reading and learning from books, and to interact with their friends about what they learn, those are unquestionably the most powerfully focused reasons for teaching children to read. 

 Assess literacy skills and…

Consequently, we should consider the benefits of assessing children’s mastery of literacy skills AND their love of reading. Let’s assess whether children enjoy choosing and reading books all by themselves, and how often they take time to pick up books to embrace their remarkable language and messages.

After all, this is what lifelong readers do every day to gain knowledge far above and beyond what they are taught in school.