How do you instill a love of reading into your kiddos?
Start early.
Read with your child every day.
Model being a reader so your kids know it is important to you.
Provide a variety of texts and opportunities to explore books.
Create a rich literacy environment at home and in your classroom.
As a classroom teacher, I dedicated about half of the room space to my enormous classroom library, and no matter the grade I taught, I always brought every single book with me to the new classroom I was setting up. You never know what book will strike the fancy or meet the needs of a student - I wanted kids to have every book at their finger tips. And it showed everyone who walked into my classroom that I believed reading was important and worthwhile.
Now, many of us have seen this infographic:
How do you get kids to love reading?
Our new ELA program is masterfully engaging kids in reading every day.
In the past, our reading programs did not provide for a sustainable chunk of time every day for reading independently - I had to build that in myself. That meant giving up time somewhere else in my schedule to get every kid reading in a quiet and focused environment for a set amount of time to build stamina, foster a love of literacy, and give me the opportunity to conference with them individually. IT WAS WORTH IT TO ME.
Now, I am in several classrooms for our IDR time - Individualized Daily Reading. Our ELA program, Collaborative Classroom, sets goals for kids to read a certain about of time, uninterrupted, each day, while the teacher conferences with individuals. It's basically my dream - administration putting this structured reading time into the schedule. And the kids LOVE it. They're beginning to love reading, which will positively impact them in every other subject area. As well as in life, because isn't that our goal? To develop life long learners?
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