Have I got a book for you...

       

     According to Short, Lynch-Brown, and Tomlinson (2014) children who resist reading do so for different reasons.  In some cases children who have average reading abilities by third or fourth grade may rarely read or may not like to read and with little practice reading, could lose their former reading achievements as they move on to higher grades.  Then there are some cases where children who struggle to read eventually lose faith and begin to avoid reading as much as possible.  It is for these children that we have to be especially diligent in our mission to deliver quality instruction and meet all of our learners’ needs. 

     According to Short et al. (2014), “Children’s interests have been shown to be one of the most powerful motivating forces available to teachers” (p.16).  One of the tools that can help us keep current on students’ reading interests is to make good use of reading inventories which we could use to assemble a collection of books that students can choose from to encourage them to read (Short et al., 2014, p. 19).

     In my journey to examine how I can motivate a reluctant reader, I found a student who is exactly in the place that the authors refer to in chapter two.  My student is in the third grade and is a capable reader at this point who often finds reading literature that is chosen for him boring and he is reluctant to read those materials that do not hold his interest.  In his free time at home he likes to play videos games, play organized baseball, and is a student of Taekwondo as well.  He does have books at home and many of those books are non-fiction books that he has purchased from the book fairs at school.  He finds that he does not enjoy fictional chapter books with story lines and fictional characters.  He is interested in animals, sports, earth science, knights, ninjas, and war.  Now I realize that there will be material that this student will have to read for curriculum purposes, but I want to be able to provide literature that he will choose to read for fun so that he doesn’t decrease his current reading achievement level and in fact, will continue to grow in his reading development in the coming grades. 

     Upon completion of a “reading interest inventory” I found that he is most interested in reading non-fiction text on the topics of animals, sports, and real events.  The book that he is currently reading for fun is a book about dinosaurs that features factual information about dinosaurs and includes some fictional information about humans surviving in the dinosaur age.  For this student I would gather non-fiction text on the topics of animals, science, and historical events.  Additionally, I would look to find books that have both fiction and non-fiction features and fictional text with the adventurous subject matter that interests him as well.  There are resources available to find quality children’s literature from a variety of places such as:  book award programs, review journals, and professional associations and websites.  Utilizing these resources can put you in touch with quality literature and strategies for incorporating literature into the curriculum as well.  It is imperative that we keep children motivated to read for fun so that they continue to develop as proficient readers and hopefully cultivate a love for reading.  I would recommend the following books to start:

Becker, H., & Ries, A. (2014). Zoobots: Wild robots inspired by real animals.

Tonawanda, NY: Kids Can Press.

Doeden, M. (2015). Combat sports. Mankato, MN: Amicus High Interest.

Leedy, L. (2010). My teacher is a dinosaur: And other prehistoric poems, jokes, riddles, & amazing facts. New York: Marshall Cavendish Children.

Osborne, M., & Boyce, N. (2014). Magic tree house survival guide. New York: Random House.

Osborne, M., & Murdocca, S. (1995). Night of the Ninjas. New York: Random House.

Osborne, M., & Boyce, N. (2014). Ninjas and samurai: A nonfiction companion to Magic tree house #5: Night of the ninjas. New York: Random House.

Tarshis, L., & Dawson, S. (2015). I survived the Joplin tornado, 2011. New York: Scholastic Inc.

Works Cited:
Short, K., Lynch-Brown, C., & Tomlinson, C. M. (2014). Essentials of children's literature. (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.
Images:

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