Getting Middle Schoolers Excited About Reading

By

Sherry Ellis

When kids are young, they are excited about books. Many even want to be authors when they grow up. I always chuckle during school visits when I ask the question, “Who wants to be an author when you grow up?” Inevitably, every hand goes up in the kindergarten and first grade groups. As the grade number goes up, the hand numbers go down. Middle-schoolers rarely have ambitions to become an author. Sometimes that also means they don’t enjoy reading. How can we get these kids excited about reading? Here are some tips teachers can use in their classrooms to get them motivated. 

1. Plan lessons around your favorite books and topics. If you’re excited about the book, that enthusiasm will show and may infect your students – in a good way!
2. Show students you’re reading, too. Post a picture of your current read on a board each week and encourage kids to ask about it. 
3. Maintain a classroom library. I see this in classrooms for the little kids all the time, but not so much in classrooms for older kids. Fill it with a wide variety of popular novels – books that would appeal to both boys and girls. Consider including shorter stories and some with illustrations that may appeal to reluctant readers.
4. Encourage independent reading by providing time to read. Have students set individual goals and reward students for reaching them. Don’t attach a grade to it though. Students may get turned off by that.
5. Watch movies of the books after reading them and compare the differences. 
6. Use audio books. Okay, so that’s not exactly reading, but it could get reluctant readers interested in books.
7. Implement classroom book clubs in which students get to choose what they want to read from a list of books and then get grouped with others who want to read the same thing. Give them some ideas for topics they can discuss that are related to the books. Encourage them to come up with their own.
8. After reading a book, have students participate in activities that help them flex their own creative muscles: imagine a different ending, write a letter to the main character referencing a specific scene, interview the villain, draw a map of the story’s setting, etc.
9. Introduce students to a popular new series. The cliff hangers might entice reluctant readers to keep reading.
10. Adopt an author. If students are excited about an author’s book, visit that author’s website and find out if that author can do a school visit or Skype visit. You can also see if that author has done any videos or webcasts that can be shown in the classroom.

With a little ingenuity, teachers can make reading fun, interesting, and engaging. And who knows? Maybe if a lot of teachers do this, the number of hands of middle-schoolers who want to be authors will go up!

Sherry Ellis - The Ghosts of Pompeii (in VOYAGERS)

Sherry Ellis is an award-winning author and professional musician who plays and teaches the violin, viola, and piano. when she is not writing or engaged in musical activities, she can be found doing household chores, hiking, or exploring the world.

Ellis' books include  Don't Feed the Elephant; Ten Zany Birds; That Mama is a Grouch; That Baby Woke Me Up, AGAIN; Bubba and Squirt's Big Dig to China; and Bubba and Squirt's Mayan Adventure.

She lives in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information about her work, she invites you to visit her website at www.sherryellis.org.