Reading is a very good habit, but to some it’s a serious battle to get engaged in reading. Although reading is extremely correlated with course and exams, but students seem to be least bothered about it prior to their exam. They often read superficially or try to read only some specific parts. As a result learning gets hampered to a great extent.
In order to enhance reading teachers all around the world have started to follow some strategies as follows:
- Why is textbook reading important and what does it teach to the students
- How to use the text books in a more better way
- Attracting students to enhance their reading capability
- Teachers help to highlight the texts so that the students find them more alluring
- Helping the students when they find reading very uninteresting
- Inculcating some pre reading strategies
To make your students an avid reader, you have to first focus on their keenness to learn about which topics. Teacher must have to aware their students about how can good English help you in fetching more marks, so that students become interested in English reading.Some of them may find historical events more interesting than any science fiction. Some may find thrilling stories more intriguing than romantic stories.
Make reading interesting:
- At first give them books of their personal choices. As soon as their interest in reading increases, tell them to read English assignments alongside.
- Prior to their reading, you can narrate some interesting part from that assignment.
- You can help them to visualize some of the incidents. For instance: it may be a beautiful island surrounded by greenery and crystal clear water and you can hear only bird hues. You can also make them imagine a war, the aftermath of World War II, about atom bombs etc.
Learn some tips to get your students interested in English reading assignment:
Draw a connection between what you are teaching and real life: With this, the students will likely to get involved with the materials you are teaching them. You can help them in the following manner:
- Always choose relevant topic while giving examples: It is commonly found in a research that those students who fails to relate studies with their own culture tends to lose interest easily. The best way to motivate students is by taking them outside the class room may be a short trip round the neighborhood.
- Help them to relate the course book with their daily life: One of the most interesting ways of enhancing student’s interest is by making them connected with real life. For instance you can help a child to apply math in managing their daily finances. Geographical distance calculation can be used to find the latitude and longitude of their distant relative’s house.
- You can link learning with routines: With the help of daily class room routine a teacher can help them to teach a lot of useful concepts. For example: washing hands before eating keeps us healthy. They can teach the concepts of body parts, hygiene and also about preventing ourselves from various diseases. Keeping the tap closed after using water helps to conserve water. All these concepts can turn very interesting just by relating them with our daily life.
You can use student’s areas of interests in a positive way: A significant way of motivating students is by encouraging their passion and interests and by engaging them in those areas. As a result you are bound to get a class of merrier and zestful of students with enthusiasm. You can use various key methods to drive their interest:
- Through literacy: You can help a child to portray his favorite character and fix it in class board. You can also help him to do a puppet show while reading the text book.
- Make History a fun filled subject: As a teacher you can create some fun with historical characters and their achievements. You can draw some pictures of war and explain them. You can use some cartoon characters to draw a relation between United nations. You can encourage them to write about topics of their choice. For more tips of inspiring students to write better you can go through 10 tips to ace your essay writing assignment.
You can give the students some choices: Students always feel special when they are allowed to make their own choices and decisions. You can use the following tips:
- Form group among students: By making few groups, students will feel happy and they will participate in a better way.
- Let the students choose their areas of interest: If the students are allowed to choose the starting point and end point of their class project then they will take the work as a challenge. They will put their best effort to provide high quality work. For example: let the child determine the color of marble paper they will use to cover a box. As soon as the students form a plan of their project then a teacher can intervene to guide them.
- Give them options for their homework: Like a menu card you get in a restaurant you can make a menu for their homework assignments. It will make them happy as they can choose 3 works out of 5. It will give them a feeling of satisfaction that they don’t have to finish all 5 of them.
Provide them information in various formats:
In this case you can make some creative works like:
- Create a response card in class: You can make some response cards or chalk board and distribute them among students and ask them to mark them daily.
- You can help your students to act as calculator: If students are used as numbers, then learning addition and subtraction can become very interesting.
- Use chart papers to portray the characters present in their reader book: With the help of diagrams and sketches of a particular character in their lesson, students will find it more interesting to read the book.
Students nowadays want to study in a smart newer ways. As a teacher you need to find some innovative ways to encourage reading. By narrating parts of stories may imbibe their interest in reading. Moreover invoking a natural thinking will lead them to read a lot of books. There are few profession websites which provide more guidelines for creating a cordial relation between teacher and students. School libraries should have plenty of interesting books, so that students get to engage themselves with reading.