This is a great time to revive the joy of reading in your children. Special reading activities, challenges and even classroom games can make reading even more fun and help nurture a lifelong love of reading.
We’ve compiled some tips, ideas and resources to help get your kids reading.
Determine Reading Level
Before you begin any type of reading activity, it is important to determine the level of your readers.
New research shows that children who read daily, from books that are at a “just right” level for them and that they find interesting, have a much better chance for success in school and beyond.
There are many options and assesments available.
Downloads:
For a fee, there are several more thorough and comprehensive programs available through educational resources.
Reading Programs
Reading programs such as the American Reading Company’s 100 Book Challenge and Scholastic’s Guided Reading Programs are a good place to start if you are considering implementing an independent reading project in your school.
You may even want to develop your own program for your classroom or school.
Reading Activities
Reading activities in the classroom are a way to add fun and enrich your reading curriculum. Here are just a few ideas.
- Scavenger Hunt – Go to the Library and do a Book Scavenger Hunt- Give the kids a list of types or topics and have them search the library for them.
- Pantomime – Have kids act out a scene or storyline from their book
- Postcard – Write to a friend, or to a character about this book. Write as if you were the character or author and write to yourself.
- Dear author – After reading a book the student(s) write the author via the publisher (who always forwards them).
- Mapmaker – Draw a map of the book’s setting.
- Billboard – Have kids create a billboard or advertisement for the book they are reading.
- Adjectiveitis -Pick five adjectives for the book or character(s), and explain how they apply.
- Collage – Create an individual or class collage around themes or characters in the book.
- Roundtable – Give students a chance to talk about what intrigues, bothers, confuses them about the book.
- Dear diary -Keep a diary as if you were a character in the story. Write down events that happen during the story and reflect on how they affected the character and why.
- Create a diorama – Create a diorama of a particularly important scene.
- Guest speaker – If you are reading a book that deals with a subject an expert might help them better understand, invite one in. Try the Veterans of Foreign Wars, for example, if reading about war.
- Dictionary – have the children write a new dictionary of words they found in the story. Use context from the story, or themes from the book to create the definitions.
Reading Rewards
Who doesn’t like to be rewarded for their efforts? Offering rewards for reading accomplishments is a great way to boost enthusiasm and encourage participation.
Tell us how you encourage reading in your classroom! Do you have a unique idea or proven method that encourages your kids to read? We want to hear about it. Please share your ideas so others may learn from them.