2. Teach children to love reading
Simply providing our students with the skills to read does not make them readers. To become readers, students must develop a positive view of reading. Sadly, most of my students have a negative view of reading. It has been a struggle for them for so long by the time they reach the middle school level, most will openly share that they hate to read. It has been a challenge for me to find ways to sway their view, and is something that I work toward every day.
The text itself, author, and reader are present for the reading experience. To help students to learn to love reading, we as educators must place the readers at the top of the priority list, rather than the text and/or the author. In other words, we need to help our students understand that reading can and should be an aesthetic experience (living the experience that unfolds within a text as they read), not just an efferent experience (focused solely on what happens once readers are done reading - answering questions, etc.) (Beers, 1998).
- Focusing on reading from an aesthetic stance can help create lifelong readers & learners
Upon initially reading Beer's (1998) article about why some students just say no to reading, I decided that I needed to focus more on integrating methods of reconnecting my readers that say they hate to read with reading for pleasure. This has not been an easy task, but I have seen glimmers of hope in some of my students. I have found Beer's blog very helpful as well, and it can be found here. I highly recommend Beer's (2011) article, cited below, to anyone working with middle school readers.
Beers, K. (1998). Choosing not to read: Understanding why some middle schoolers just say no. Into focus: Understanding and creating middle school readers, 37-63. Retrieved from https://webfirst. uark.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Beers-Choosing-not-to-Read.pdf