Last week I shared with you 3 incentives to get your child to read. They can all be adapted to the classroom, but I have even better incentives for teachers to use on their students:
A teacher has an extra responsibility to ensure that children have the ability to read because that is our job. A teacher must make sure that her or his students are ready to read books at the level they should be reading. You can use class exercises to teach phonics, sight words and so on, on their level.
Furthermore, teachers should introduce children to good books. You can either read an entire book in class in short parts, or start them off with the first chapter of a good book. You can use peer excitement and get everyone to read the same book together. Not for studying! Have them read some in class and some at home.
Read out the first few chapters of a book in class and let the students who like it borrow it from the school library. Do this with many different books of different types. Make sure the words are on the appropriate reading and intellectual level!
Make sure your students have appropriate books at easy access. Bring 10-15 books on the right level to your classroom. Yes, do this even if this means that you are lugging books from the library to the classroom!
And of course - be part of the Readathon as a classroom effort! Track your students successes on our Readathon site and motivate your class to read the most books! To be the top reading school! There is nothing like competition to get those kids reading!
Good Luck!
Gaila
Gaila has almost 40 year of experience teaching and runs A.H.A.V.A., a non-profit to promote English literacy. Would you like to ask Gaila a question? Email us at ahava.org@gmail.com or send us a message. Look out for more Dear Gaila columns