IDEAS FOR MOTIVATING LEARNERS TO READ

EVELYN S. SORIANO

Assessments continue to indicate that boys lag behind girls in the area of reading. The gap tends to grow larger as students enter adolescence. Its also no secret that many teenage boys dislike reading in class or at home. While it’s not true that all teenage boys dislike reading, there is a growing trend of many becoming unmotivated readers. Obviously, students who are resistant to reading are unlikely to get better at it.

Here are ideas for motivating adolescent male readers: Oftentimes, teachers emphasize the importance of reading skills or reading content by saying, You will need this for the test, or You will need this for college, or When you get to the real world, you’ll need to be able to do this. Well, students are living in the real world right now, and, for the most part, they have real concerns about their lives that they want to solve. Many boys (and teenagers overall) like to know how learning impacts their lives in the moment, and they are generally not concerned with how schoolwork relates to an unclear future.

We can make the reading we choose for whole-class instruction more motivating by relating it to the here and now. Survey your students to determine what they want to learn, and select reading materials aligned with their interests. Have students create products, presentations, or skits from their reading materials. Many boys will readily engage in activities that ask them to create something meaningful or to perform for their p eer s.

Also, consider designing inquiry units where students research answers to questions that concern teens, such as Is the senior year of high school necessary? Or Is love really all you need? Weaving literature and informational texts around such topics can motivate many students, especially if students have some voice in what the inquiry topics will be.

In some schools, there is a narrow view of what constitutes literacy. Even with the adoption of Common Core Standards that emphasize informational text, the primary focus of secondary English language arts classes, especially in high schools, is often the study of literature. Boys engage in many other forms of literacy that traditionally are not valued by teacher s.

Since many boys do not read teacher-privileged literary fiction texts at home, many of them classify themselves as non-readers, even if they do extensive reading from the Internet, magazines, and newspapers One solution that can have tremendous positive effects on motivation is incorporating self-selected reading as part of the English language arts classroom. Conferring with students individually over self-chosen reading provides opportunities to validate and support boys independent reading.

Once you have learned a bit more about your male students reading preferences, you can find texts with similar genres, themes, or topics to include in whole-class reading. You can also better select texts for a classroom library. Many boys need to feel like they can accomplish a task in order to even attempt it. Thus, goals must be perceived as achievable in order for boys to feel competent.

The most-motivating activities offer success and demonstrate evidence of growth. Scaffolding and differentiation strategies can contribute to developing a sense of competence. For example, many teachers use a site that allows the user to alter the reading complexity of recent news stories.

Students can even self-select their own reading levels based upon factors such as familiarity with the topic, their reading purpose, and their comprehension. Another option for students is using social scaffolding techniques can select reading partners and then take turns reading, frequently stopping to discuss their comprehension of the text. Sentence starters can be used to help students initiate those conversations.

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The author is Master Teacher II at Santa Rita Elementary School, Division of Pampanga