How to Motivate Students to Read at Home

Using a Literacy Log to Encourage Student Reading

Dec 16, 2008

Coming up with idea to help motivate students to practice their reading skills at home may be as simple as creating a Literacy Log.

Encouraging students to read outside of the classroom can be a real challenge for teachers. Students often need motivation to read, and creating a literacy log may be the thing that causes your students to pick up a book and read.

Answering Prompts

Create a Literacy Log for your students to encourage them to practice their reading at home. One way this log can be designed, is much like a journal that the students must turn in every Friday that talks about what they read at home. In the journal the students would have a list of prompts to choose from, as they write about what they read. Examples of prompts include:

Requiring a Parent Signature

By assigning nightly reading for students, and having a sheet for parents to sign or initial, you can improve the odds of having your students practice their reading skills at home. The idea behind having the parent sign off on the reading that the child does, is to help the student become more responsible for following through on homework assignments.

Even with this method in place, you may have students who either refuse to do the work or whose parents refuse to sign off on the reading. If this is a problem, you can always simply assign 15-30 minutes of reading each night for homework, and accept the fact that some students will never follow through. These students will be the ones who need additional help in the classroom.

Short Summary and Monthly Presentation

Another idea to log student reading at home is to have your students write a 20 word summary each night about what they have read. You can be flexible with the exact count, but the idea is to get them to tell you the main idea of what they read. Check the log weekly, and include it in the student’s grade to provide incentive for completing the assignment. This is also a way to allow students to read whatever they want at home, which will motivate them to read more.

At the end of each month or grading period, you can have the students share a 2 minute presentation of one of the books they read. The presentation should have some visual aspect to it, whether the student puts together a diorama, makes a posters, dresses like a character, or cooks a dish related to the book. This helps students with their public speaking skills, and kids often really get into these presentations. In addition, it may get students interested in a book they might not have originally picked up.

When requiring a literacy log for your students, you are demonstrating the importance that they read even outside of the classroom. Many students need some extra motivation to read, and providing the accountability of a literacy log may be the push that a student needs to pick up a book and learn to enjoy reading.

The copyright of the article How to Motivate Students to Read at Home in New Teacher Support is owned by Jennifer Wagaman. Permission to republish How to Motivate Students to Read at Home in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.