Readerful: Episode 5 – Motivating children to read

Creating contexts to motivate children to read

By Sarah McGeown

Watch: Dr Sarah McGeown on creating contexts to motivate and engage children to read

Creating contexts which motivate and engage child readers is essential to inspiring and sustaining a life-long love of reading. Research illustrates that there is a range of rich positive experiences and outcomes associated with book reading for children who are motivated to read, and engaged that engage with the books they read. Book reading develops children’s reading and language skills, as well as their understanding of the world, themselves, and others. It also provides a time for children to relax, laugh, think, pursue their interests, spend time with fictional friends or escape to other worlds. However, not all children have these positive experiences when reading. How teachers can create contexts to support the reading motivation and engagement of all children? There are six research-informed principles to support this, and these are: access, choice, time, connection, social and success (McGeown et al., 2023).

Access

Children are more motivated to read when they have easy access to books aligned with their interests, preferences, lives and abilities. To encourage this, you can try to ensure book provision in your school reflects the needs and interests of its the school community, and encourage children’s input into new book purchases. You can also increase children’s access to books by reading aloud in class, and introduce children to books they would not otherwise encounter as a result.

Choice

Having a choice of books and reading activities is key to supporting children’s reading motivation and engagement. However, many children do not have the skills to choose books which align with their interests and abilities. Therefore, providing guidance, modelling strategies, and giving children the time and opportunities to choose books to read, will increase the likelihood that the books chosen will really resonate with them, helping to develop their passion for reading.

Time

Having quality time to choose books and read these in school is essential to support home reading practices, especially for children who do not currently read at home. Making time to discuss, share and recommend books to others creates communities of readers in a class, and gives children ideas for their next read! For teachers, making sure time is protected for children to develop their love of reading, in addition to their practical skills in reading, is essential.

Connection

Connecting with books, characters, topics and stories all helps to build a love of reading, and accordingly having access to books that facilitate this connection is pivotal to young readers. This connection may be in terms of personal connection (e.g., whether the book reflects their life, interests and/or experiences) or it might be whether the book connects with the type of reading experience they are seeking (e.g., to laugh, pursue interests, etc). Encourage children to reflect on what type of book they are in the mood for before selecting, and discussing how books provide opportunities to explore personally meaningful content is a way for you to help your students select texts that will be able to connect with.

Social

Discussing, sharing and recommending books to others creates communities of readers within a class, and having inclusive and enjoyable reading experiences with others can help to foster a love of reading. Providing quality time for children to engage in social reading practices is important, with different options as to how children contribute to these to ensure inclusive practices that all children want to engage with, and find meaning in. This could be via xyz, zyx or abc.

Success

To be a motivated and engaged reader, children need positive reading experiences, and need to be able to recognise their growing success as readers. Encourage children to recognise the different ways in which they have, and can continue to develop as readers is key to enabling them to see their progress. For example, success can mean feeling more confident choosing books, talking about books or recommending books to others, choosing to read more at home, or discovering a new author/series/genre, etc. By encouraging children to recognise the different ways in which they are developing as readers, they can be supported to set personal goals for themselves and recognise their growing success as readers.

With these six principles in mind, and coupled with SOMETHING you have a full toolkit to inspire, motivate and engage your students with reading as a leisure activity that is pleasurable something or other.

Reference

McGeown, S., Oxley, E., and the Love to Read team (2022). Love to Read: A programme to inspire and sustain a love of reading. Available from: https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/lovetoread/

Dr Sarah McGeown

Sarah McGeown is a Reading for Pleasure and Literacy Expert, at the University of Edinburgh. Sarah’s insight has been invaluable as Readerful has developed to ensure reading for pleasure won’t be left to chance.