Are you a teacher looking for a quick and easy solution to make your students read? Sparking the joy of reading among students is difficult, especially for kindergarten-level children. All they like to do is interact, and learn through practical activities. Since kids have a very short attention span, they are not often interested in reading things at all. Grabbing their attention and keeping it is challenging enough. Another issue is the online medium of education. School management software is great for high school and middle school students since they can use their flexible class patterns to incorporate as many activities as possible. For elementary students, it is a completely different story. Most elementary-level children don’t even know the LMS full form, let alone use it to study. Considering all such challenges, we have come up with smart reading tips parents and teachers can follow to indulge their students in as many reading activities as possible.
Lead them with examples
Children learn to speak by observing their parents, other family members, and teachers. Similarly, they learn to hold a pencil, or a spoon, walk, read and write by imitating how the people around them do it. This is the most common form of learning. Similarly, teachers should practice as many reading activities in a classroom as possible to lead children by example. When they observed their teacher is excited about a reading lesson, they will want to get excited too, which will subconsciously make them want to read.
Variety is the key
Do we eat the same food every day? Doctors recommend an assortment of items in our diet, and we two as individuals like to eat different things four different means. Having the same meal all the time will get boarding, monotonous, and will not spark any joy. The essence of reading too is in variety. Students should not always read-only literature chapters. Teachers should provide books about plants, animals, detective stories, real life, picture books, etc. There is an endless number of book recommendations for children, all teachers have to do is arrange them.
Group reading session
Children love doing things in groups, mostly because it makes them feel like the activity is a game. They will like to read when allowed to do so in turns. Teachers have observed students waiting eagerly for their turn to speak when group reading activities are encouraged in classrooms.
Rewards
Rewarding children for academic activities is the most commonly used method for growth and development. it motivates students to keep doing good. Reading fluently without stopping deserves a pat on the back, and a candy maybe. Teachers can try and reward their students as much as possible to encourage development activities such as reading.
Games
Everyone loves games! Especially kindergarten students. Whether it is an outdoor game or an indoor one, there are no stopping students from choosing playing games over learning something. Teachers have found a loophole in this and commonly used playful activities to encourage learning in kindergarten classrooms. The musical chair is a popular game among students of all levels. To include reading in this, teachers should hand out pamphlets of instruction listed with rewards, and other rules they should follow. Another way to make them read while playing musical chairs would be to make them all read a paragraph before they can sit on the chair. So, instead of playing a song and running around chairs, they would have to sit down and read to see who finishes reading first to go and sit on the chair.
Why make kids read?
Now we know how we can make children read things, but why are we doing it? Here are a few reasons why parents should always encourage reading activities-
- Reading enables students to improve their language skills, considering their first language is not English.
- Improves social communication skills.
- Children can express their feelings and emotions openly since they know and have the right words to use for the expression of emotions.
- The thinking capacity of a child is limited by the media they consume. If they are subjected to diverse forms of subjects by making them read about different topics, their creative thinking ability improves.
- They develop a unique perception of life.
- Reading about different things improves a child’s knowledge. They might not absorb any and every information, but up to a limit, they can understand and remember what they read.
Start reading activities with your child today to ensure their mental development. If their school does not encourage as many activities, be a responsible parent and use these smart reading tips to motivate your children.