Reader Interest is the key to engaging a person in reading. This is why the publishers of why popular fiction books create eye-catching covers. Conversely, very few of us look forward to reading materials that are assigned by teachers, especially non-fiction materials that are dense in terms of content. Educators must break out of the assign and tell mode and try to get students to see the power and enjoyment that can come with reading.

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Find Books that Match Students’ Interests!

• We cannot create engaged and eager readers through curricular content alone (if anything, mandatory reading of class content is likely to suggest to students that reading writ large is boring). Educators and parents must help students discover that reading can be enjoyable and empowering

  • Read Young Adult Literature and Middle Grades Literature (yes, there is a difference) and know what the best sellers are in those genres
    • Use the Young Adult Library Services (YALSA) to find exceptional young adult and middle grades texts
    • See my own selections on great books for middle school grades and young adult readers
    • Keep an eye on what genres are selling/popular in those areas via your public library, and the bestseller lists for those genres (e.g., New York Times), and via my other suggestions

  • Utilize great short stories (especially using read-alouds) to capture and keep students’ interest

    • Read aloud using voices for characters and model inflection (and/or get students to take on parts of characters)

    • Focus on the macabre (Flannery O’Connor, Edgar Alan Poe, Faulkner) because younger readers love the horror genre

      • O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (high schoolers)

      • Poe (upper elementary and older)

      • Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” (middle or high school)

      • Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (upper elementary and older)

  • Use graphic novels sometimes instead or traditional prose narratives (remember that graphics not only engage many reluctant readers, they help scaffold meaning-with the text)

    • Consider the great lessons you could create using books like Maus, American Born Chinese, Persepolis…

    • Think about teaching The Illiad, The Odyssey, and other “classics” that have been put into graphic text format

  • Maintain a Class Library full of Young Adult Literature and Banned Books (and don't fret when/if books disappear because that means students are reading)

    • Note that in places like Florida, class libraries must be "approved" by the state

      • The book approval process is political and its purpose has been to ban books threatening to the status quo). 

 

Engage Students With Problem Perspectives Before They Read

• Pose questions and contexts to help students see that almost all of the materials that they read are attempts to answer a problem; lay out some of the big problems the book will address by getting students to think and feel as the characters would have thought and felt. 

  • Ask students to Don’t respond just from their own positionality, but from the position of someone else. Examples relating to topics in literature: 

    • Racism: Had you been an affluent southerner in 1850, would you have been for or against slavery?

    • Sexism and Misogyny:were you growing up in the early to mid-part of the last century, would you attitudes toward a woman’s rightful place be different than it is now? How so?

    • Colonialism:If aliens appeared in orbit around the earth next week, would you be excited, scared, or both?What would it mean to you that another intelligent species—far more intelligent than humans—exists and that they could easily dominate us if they wished?How does this differ from what people felt when their native lands were being colonized?

    • Cultural Transmission:  Had you grown up in 1930s Germany, would you have been a member of the Nazi Youth? Why or why not?

 

Use High Quality Anticipation Guides (or make them yourself)

• Use Intra Act (the most popular pre-reading activity my students and I have used)!

• Prediction guides using key vocabulary from the story (see below)

• Chapter Trailers (find or create short videos that capture the excitement about the content students will be reading)

• Super-secret information that those in power don’t want you to know!

  • Banned books!  Examine the American Library Association's list of most commonly challenged and banned books and choose texts from there and tell students that these books are frequently banned. 

    • Younger readers are keen to read things that they think are illicit (when, in fact, most banned books are exceptionally well written and appropriate for most readers) 

 

Use New Literacy Theory in Creative Ways

• New Literacy Theory posits that reading is by default a social act. The reader comes to a text written by someone in the past. The author is communicating with the reader, who in turn takes from their reading information that is largely influenced by their own contexts.The reader “makes meaning with the text” rather than takes meaning from the text.Additionally, NLT holds that as a form of artistic expression, literary texts are open to multiple interpretations.!

  • Give students texts that might have more than one interpretation (especially poems and shorter passages).

    • Get students to lay out their interpretations (ideally a few different interpretations)

    • Give your interpretation (or traditional interpretation)

      • Compare

      • Stress that the students’ interpretations—so long as they can be backed up by the text itself—are valid!

        • A piece of literature need not have only one meaning (just as any work of art can and should be interpreted differently by different viewers)

          • Example: Is W.B. Yeats's "A Drinking Song" an ode to falling in love or is it about beer goggles (i.e., the more one drinks, the better one's date looks)?  

            • Answer: It could be either depending upon reader perspective!

 

Use Critical Literacy (but name it something different if teaching in restrictive states like Florida)

• There are always power dynamics at play in quality literature (and often in nonfiction texts); get students to look for the hidden messages they are receiving. Just as we are all being influenced by constant media images (e.g., advertisements), authors and publishers convey ideas that also have an influence on us

  • Let students know that the texts that they read are often imbued with hidden meanings, some of which are meant to reinforce the status quo while others are meant to challenge the status quo

    • Get students to seek out what people or groups might benefit from the idea conveyed in a text.

      • Who may be oppressed by the messages in the text?  Why?

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Give Students a Choice in What They Read (especially in ELA and Social Studies)

• Maintain over the content get more student buy-in by letting them know that they have some power to make curricular choices

  • Banned Books: these are, by default, enticing to students

• Choose a few texts that have similar themes and that meet the state standards (which should be applicable to most quality texts on the subject) and let students choose which one to read

• Create book clubs within your class in which students can read in their spare time in class and in which they can choose their text (and associate this with an assignment on their chosen book)

 

Use Audio Books

• Example of Their Eyes Were Watching God

  • Some audiobook versions of this novel help it to come alive for a new generation of students

    • The dialect makes sense when it is read aloud and when characters act out the dialogue

• Shakespeare is far better when one can listen to it while following along in the text (Shakespeare's plays weren't meant to be read; they were meant to be watched!)

  • When teaching complex texts like Shakespeare, have students use Character Maps to keep track of who is who!

 

Remember That Teacher Enthusiasm Matters!

• Fake it until you make it; in an era of scripted and controlled curricula, teachers are not likely to love every piece of literature or content that they are required to teach. But we must fake it!Students will read our subtle clues about our feelings.

  • One of my favorite high school English teachers gets so excited about “The Crucible” that her students end up getting excited by it

  • The best teacher I ever had (John Giles) used to dress up in costumes, walk on desks, bring in artifacts, etc. all related to the social studies content we were learning (every class had the potential for adventure)

 

Remember That Classroom Contexts Matter!

• The teacher who goes above and beyond to help create a classroom that reflects what students are reading about is helping engender interest in the topic at hand

  • “Faux” chalk outline and crime scene tape for a murder mystery

  • Science images relating to space, to microbes, to complex mathematics problems, images from historical events (war, famine, victory, defeat…) — aka, real-world issues raised and (maybe) solved that are related to the content you are teaching

  • Posters and “found” images for short stories and novels (relating to the themes, the authors, the times, etc.

    • E.g., when teaching To Kill a Mockingbird, print out or buy images that match the text or that are from the movie

      • The example of Scout dressed as a ham (below)

      • The dead mockingbird (below)