Motivating and Engaging Students in Reading

Many teachers think of a motivated reader as a student who is having fun while reading. This may be true, but there are many forms of motivation that might not be related to fun and excitement. What we mean by motivation are the values, beliefs, and behaviors surrounding reading for an individual. Some productive values and beliefs may lead to excitement, yet other values may lead to determined hard work.

We talk about three powerful motivations that drive students' reading. They operate in school and out of school, and they touch nearly every child. Some students may have all of these motivations and some may have only one. For some students, these motivations appear in the positive form driving students toward reading. For other students, the motivations are negative and push students away from books. When we talk about reading motivations we refer to:

(1) Interest, 

(2) Dedication

(3) Confidence. 

An interested student reads because he enjoys it; a dedicated student reads because he believes it is important, and a confident student reads because he can do it. We discuss each of these in this essay with an emphasis on dedication.

What can a teacher do?

We offer six motivation practices that teachers can implement daily in the classroom. These practices can be brought into every lesson and directed to every student. Teachers do not have to wait for motivation to come from the outside. They can make it happen any time they want to implement one of these six practices.

Research undergirds the impact of these practices on students becoming avid readers and on students
becoming achieving readers. We provide examples of these practices from the literature and from our own experiences in our research and teaching.

  

Interest

When we think of motivation our mind first turns to interest. Motivation is enjoying a book, being excited about an author, or being delighted by new information. Researchers refer to interest as intrinsic motivation, meaning something we do for its own sake. On a rainy day, we might rather read our favorite mystery than do anything else. We are not trying to get a reward when falling into a novel. Motivation also brings to mind the reward for success. Who doesn't like to win a trinket for hitting the target with a dart at the State Fair? Who doesn't want to earn serious money for working hard in a career? These are extrinsic rewards because someone gives them to us. We do not give them to ourselves, and these rewards do propel us to put out effort, focus energy, and get up in the morning.

 Confidence as a reader

 
Belief in yourself is more closely linked to achievement than any other motivation throughout school. The reason is that confidence, which refers to belief in your capacity, is tied intimately to success. This link occurs for simple, daily reading tasks. A student who reads one page fluently thinks he can read the next page in the same book proficiently. The link is also forged for reading in general. A student who reads fluently and understands well is also sure of himself as a reader. In and out of school, people like the things they do well. Conversely, students who struggle begin to doubt their abilities. They expect to do poorly in reading, writing, and talking ahout text. The real dilemma is that lower-achieving students often exaggerate their limitations. Believing they are worse than they really are, they stop trying completely. Retreating from all text interactions, they reduce their own opportunity to do what they want to do more than anything—to be a good reader. Their low confidence undermines them even further in a cycle of douht and failure. By middle school, hreaking this cycle is a formidable challenge for teachers.

Dedication

Although intrinsic motivation is desirable because it is gratifying for the student, and because it energizes students to achieve, this type of motivation is not always possible in school. There are assignments that are not desirable to a student, yet are part of the curriculum. There are books that do not appeal to some individuals, yet at a given moment in a given school, it is necessary to read them. What motivation enables students to read in this situation? The reason to read in this case is the students' belief that reading is important, the students' persistence in reading whatever the assignment, and the students' organization that enables them to put forth effort effectively. We call this dedication. Every student has the potential to be dedicated. Skill may be hard for some students to develop, but dedication is related to will. It is up to a student to decide whether to be dedicated or not. Students are either avoidant, dedicated, or somewhere in between the two. In this section, we will describe avoidant and dedicated behaviors in the words of middle school students. These signs are showing their value of reading, being well organized, and making efforts to be successful in reading. Essentially, dedicated students persist, plan, a.nd place apriority on their reading. These are the three key signs of dedication in students.