How to get a child interested in reading

14 Ways to Encourage Grade-Schoolers to Read

It’s easier for kids to build reading skills when they enjoy reading. They practice more, and they feel more motivated to take on reading challenges. Try these tips to encourage your child to read — and hopefully build a love of reading.

1. Read it again and again.

Encourage your child to read familiar books. If your child wants to take the same book out of the library for the 100th time, that’s just fine. Re-reading helps build speed and accuracy. And that can help build confidence for kids who learn and think differently.

2. Make reading real.

Connect what your child reads with what’s happening in real life. For example, if you’re reading a story about basketball, ask questions about when your child learned to shoot hoops and how similar it was to the kids’ experience in the story.

You can also look for follow-up activities that make stories come to life. If the book references kites, ask your child to brainstorm fun kite-related activities, like how to make a kite. Hands-on activities like these can keep kids engaged with the topic.

3. Don’t leave home without something to read.

Bring along a kid-friendly book or magazine any time you know your child will have to wait in a doctor’s office, at the DMV, or anywhere else. Stories can help keep your child occupied. And the experience will show that you can always fit in time to read.

4. Dig deeper into the story.

Help your child engage with a story by asking questions about the characters’ thoughts, actions, or feelings: “Why does Jack think it’s a good idea to buy the magic beans? How does his mother feel after she finds out?” Encourage your child to connect to the story through experiences you may have had together.

5. Make reading a free-time activity.

Try to avoid making TV the reward and reading the punishment. Remind your child there are fun things to read besides books. And set a good example for your child by spending some of your free time reading instead of watching TV — and then talking about why you enjoyed it.

6. Take your time.

When your child is sounding out an unfamiliar word, leave plenty of time to do it, and praise the effort. Treat mistakes as an opportunity for improvement. Imagine your child misreads listen as list. Try re-reading the sentence together and ask which word makes more sense. Point out the similarities between the two words and the importance of noticing the final syllable.

7. Pick books at the right level.

Help your child find books that aren’t too hard or too easy. Kids have better reading experiences when they read books at the right level. You can check your choices by having your child read a few pages to you. Then ask questions about what was read. If your child struggles with reading the words or retelling the story, try a different book.

8. Play word games.

Use word games to help make your child more aware of the sounds in words. Say tongue twisters like “She sells seashells by the seashore. ” Sing songs that use wordplay, like Schoolhouse Rock’s “Conjunction Junction.” Or swap out the letters in words to turn them into new words. (For example, map can become nap or rap if you change the first letter, man if you change the final letter, and mop if you change the middle.)

9. Read to each other.

Take turns reading aloud during story time. As your child grows as a reader, you can gradually read less and let your child take the lead more often. If you have younger kids, too, encourage your older one to take on the responsibility of reading to them.

10. Point out the relationships between words.

Talk about words whenever you can. Explain how related words have similar spellings and meanings. Show how a noun like knowledge, for example, relates to a verb like know . Point out how the “wild” in wild and wilderness are spelled the same but pronounced differently.

11. Make books special.

Kids who have trouble with reading may try to avoid it because it makes them feel anxious or frustrated. Try to create positive feelings around reading by making it a treat. Get your child a library card or designate special reading time for just the two of you. Give books as gifts or rewards.

12. Make reading creative.

Change up reading activities to play to your child’s strengths. If your child loves to draw or make things, create a book together. Fold paper and staple it to resemble a book. Work together to write sentences on each page and have your child add illustrations or pictures. Then read it out loud together.

13. Let your child choose.

Some kids prefer nonfiction books. Some love only fantasy or graphic novels. Or maybe your child prefers audiobooks or reading things online. The important thing is to practice reading, no matter where or how it happens.

14. Look for a series of books.

Ask a librarian or a teacher for suggestions about popular book series your child might like. Reading a series of books helps kids get familiar with the tone, characters, and themes. This familiarity can make the next books in the series easier to grasp.

Get tips on fun books for reluctant readers. You can also check out book picks from our community.

9 Fun Ways to Keep Kids Interested in Reading and Storytelling

It can sometimes be a struggle to get kids interested in reading, but it’s so important, in ways we may not always think about. Reading and storytelling are vital to preserving cultural identity, developing healthy brains, and cultivating curiosity in youngsters. In the following excerpt from Mamaleh Knows Best: What Jewish Mothers Do to Raise Successful, Creative, Empathetic, Independent Children, author Marjorie Ingall offers a simple methodology for getting kids interested in storytelling and helping them find their sweet spot when it comes to reading.

1. Storytelling doesn’t just mean reading! Listen to storytelling podcasts and radio shows like The Moth. Play audiobooks in the car. Retell folktales, fairy tales, urban legends, family lore. Whenever you’re telling or reading a story, keep your kid engaged by asking them open-ended questions about the characters or plot, questions the kid can’t answer with a yes or no.

2. If your kid doesn’t like to read, don’t give up. You haven’t found the right book. Explore different kinds of fiction, poetry, graphic novels, books of world records and kooky facts, profiles of presidents and sports heroes, gross-out science books. Get suggestions from a cool teacher or librarian. If your kid has a learning disability or just isn’t into reading on their own, read aloud to them, tell stories and listen to audiobooks together for as long as your kid will let you.

3. You can’t go wrong with funny. For younger kids, rhyming books are great; they can guess at each rhyme, so there’s built-in suspense. Have no shame when you read aloud: Do accents. Take dramatic pauses. Modulate your voice, raising and lowering it to build narrative momentum. Let your children mock you. My kids always loved when I cried at the end of Charlotte’s Web or Mrs. Katz and Tush. They’d look at each other, snickering, clearly thinking, Poor Mom, she’s daft.

4. Dedicate time to reading. Make it a ritual. Make it part of your day. If your kid is not a sit-still kid, even 15 minutes of reading a day is better than nothing. And again: You might just not be reading the right book.

5. Let kids choose their own books. I’ve never told my kids they weren’t allowed to read something. I learned this from my fabulous mom, who watched me read Deb Putnoi’s copy of Judy Blume’s Forever at a house party when I was nine. Adults were giving her an earful about “letting me” read something so risqué, but she kept replying with variants of “If she has questions, she’ll ask me.” That was a big lesson for me, and now that I’m a parent, I’ve exercised veto power only at bedtime, and only once or twice. Because when [my daughter] Josie got scared she became a hysterical chaleria (excessively nervous person: literally “person with cholera”) and would fight sleep for days and make us all want to die of exhaustion. (Advice within advice: Let your children read Roald Dahl’s The Witches only during daylight hours.) And if your kid is reading books you don’t approve of — from sexist comic books to poorly written sparkly vampire romance, the worst thing you can do is ban what they love. Talk about why you think certain books are dumb or offensive (or better, let your kid make a book recommendation, actually read the thing, and then discuss the book together), but don’t shame your kid for having different tastes from yours.

6. Harness peer pressure. Kids take book recommendations from other kids more seriously than they do recommendations from adults. When Josie went through a sci-fi and fantasy stage, a genre about which I’m clueless, she got book suggestions from her friend Nora.

7. Get your kid into series books. They may not be the greatest literature, but they create anticipation and identification with recurring characters. You can always mindlessly borrow or buy the next one in the series, which is a huge relief when you’d rather be thinking about a cocktail than kids’ lit.

8. Kids see through “do as I say, not as I do.” Model the behavior you want to see. Invite your kid to sit next to you on the couch as you both read. Keep books out — in baskets, on shelves, and on coffee tables. The way I got Josie to read Harry Potter — which I knew she’d love but which she stubbornly refused to try because she is contrary like her mother — was to take it on vacation, leave it on the coffee table of our rental house, and say absolutely nothing.

9. Pro Tip: “Two truths and a lie” is a good way to get sullen tweens to tell a story. Here’s the game: At dinner, everyone has to say three things that happened that day, two of which are true and one of which isn’t. Then everyone else has to guess which is the lie. It’s a sneaky way to get anecdotes out of your kids beyond “How was your day?” “Fine.”

Adapted from Mamaleh Knows Best: What Jewish Mothers Do to Raise Successful, Creative, Empathetic, Independent Children by Marjorie Ingall. © 2016 by Marjorie Ingall. Harmony, Crown Publishing Group, Penguin Random House LLC.

25 ways to get kids hooked on books - light blog If a child has never seen you reading a book, go to...

Olena Pavlova

17 Sep 2019

Elena Pavlova, the editor-in-chief of Osvitoriya.Media and the author of the comic book cat Inzhir, advises how to get your child interested in reading. Ukrainian cat.

Read for yourself. If a child has never seen you reading a book, you have no chance of getting him interested in reading.

Turn reading into a ritual - over morning coffee with cardamom or evening scented cocoa, at dawn before business, or in bed before bedtime. You remember that gadgets do not belong there. Therefore, a good book - in bed!

Set up the world's coziest reading nook at home. It can be a comfortable chair or sofa, a sun-drenched wide window sill with pillows, a coffee table with your favorite table lamp, a bean bag chair, a balcony or attic, or just an inspiring corner hung with drawings and postcards. Let the child arrange his own “place of power”, where you can hang out with a book and no one will bother you.

How do you find time for books when you are super busy? Just. Every time you want to look at your phone and check the likes, know this is the time to read. If you read books instead of the Internet, then you can read everything that you bought, - suggests the cat Fig.

Create a page for yourself and your child on Goodreads - this is a social network - an online reader's diary. You can add books there, write reviews, rate, recommend books to friends and enjoy the fact that there are more and more books on your “Read” shelf. And at the end of the year, the platform will even count the number of pages you read and create beautiful infographics.

Act like an Internet advertisement by giving your child books on topics they are interested in. It is important to do this in an unobtrusive way - after all, no one likes intrusive advertising. As with advertising, frequency is important - let the children constantly catch the eye of books.

Surround yourself and your child with cool books. Let them lie everywhere - on every shelf, in every bag, in the toilet and near the bed - the eyes see, the hand stretches.

Don't leave home without a book. Read in line or on the road - a boring routine can turn into the best moments of the day.

Choose your books carefully. Take book shopping seriously - follow the news, ratings, scroll through everything for a long time and concentrated in the store. A good book will immediately grab your attention, and you won't want to stop reading it. Choose with your child.

Offer contemporary books. If a child is surrounded by really interesting modern publications and heroes with whom he can identify himself, there is every chance that he will become an avid reader. Do not immediately slip complex classics to him - you still need to grow up to the classics. Even if you liked her so much as a child. You didn't have YouTube when you were a kid. Even non-boring classics were still written in conditions when time flowed in a completely different way: old books seem unnecessarily long to a modern child. Do not blame YouTube, the world and our perception has changed, we need modern bright images and dynamic stories.

Follow beautiful book stories on Instagram and Telegram channels that inspire you to read.

Organize a book club at home - every Sunday for a delicious apple pie, gather the whole family and discuss who read interesting things. This will positively affect family relationships, because communication itself is valuable, for which now there is so little time for everyone. Don't interrupt, listen carefully to the stories. The TV must be turned off. This family warmth will create a positive image of reading, and the feeling that you are being listened to and heard is very important for everyone.

Watch movies and series based on books with your child. Then there is always a desire to re-read, compare, get a continuation of the story.

Sign up at your nearest library. You will be surprised by the changes that have taken place in it since you were here - now you can find the latest books here, and this will help save a lot on book shopping.

Start a book blog with your child - this can be a separate YouTube channel, Instagram page or Telegram channel, where the child will talk or write about some cool book every week. Become a producer of this blog - help during filming or invite more readers. Such a project will encourage the child to read systematically. After all, everything is serious - subscribers will be waiting for a new blog every week, at a clear time.

Host a book challenge. Develop thematic tasks that the child must complete in order to receive the prize that he has long dreamed of. For example, the theme might be Color. The tasks are to read a book with a green cover in a month, a book by an author with a “colored surname”, a book with a color in the title, learn a poem where colors appear.

Conduct a divination session on verses. Ask humorous questions like, "What's in store for us on a math test?" or “Who is your roommate in love with?” Turn reading into entertainment, accompanied by laughter and positivity.

Start your own library with your child. Let him create a catalog - electronic. He will come up with a system by which books will be arranged - alphabetically or thematically. Children value private property, especially when it is their personal book and not a shared family book. Get yourself a library card here.

Watch movies or series about book lovers with your children.

Go together to literary presentations, book festivals. There's plenty to keep kids entertained, and the charisma of living authors, their witty stories, and authority can inspire reading and interest in a book.

Play audiobooks at home or in the car - during household chores, for example. A good plot and reading can interest a child.

Throw a themed children's book party, such as a Harry Potter theme. Choose a passage for the guests to act out. Or let them improvise.

Host a "garage sale" in your home or yard—invite your child's friends to bring in books they've read that they'd like to trade in for others.

Throw away bad books. Do not force yourself or the child. To read all the good books in this world, even nine cat lives will not be enough. Don't waste your time on the bad ones.

Become a book addict. Read always, everywhere, everywhere, and most importantly - for pleasure. So focused, enthusiastic and drunk, like it's a bad habit. Although it's actually good.

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Author: Olena Pavlova

10 fun ways to get kids excited about reading

Despite the fact that today almost everyone carries a large part of the world's library in their pocket, the overall level of literacy, erudition and horizons of children is not increasing. And here we are again faced with the eternal question: "What to do?". And this is not a rhetorical question at all. It is necessary to show children that reading can be fun and positive emotions. Alikhan Dinaev, based on the research of the philologist and teacher Evgenia Abelyuk, and based on personal experience, talks about ten effective techniques.

1. Read aloud to children

And start as early as possible. Many experts, based on scientific research, advise starting literally from the first day of a child's life. The more you talk to him, the more he hears the words around him, the faster he will speak and become interested in books.

2. Show your acting talents

At the same time, you should not mumble something incoherent under your breath, but read "with feeling, with sense, with arrangement." Read as if you are the only actor in a big play playing all the roles at the same time. Say the words of a child in a sweet and funny childish voice, the words of a grandmother in an senile female voice, dilute the speech of some monster with frightening notes.

If the author writes that the hero shouted, shout, if he whispered, do the same! And if he howls, then why not play the role of a wolf for a few seconds by the light of the moon?

Do you think this is funny? That is how it is. But who said that if it looks comical, then it's bad? Believe me, the children will be completely delighted, and their sincere and contagious laughter will spread throughout the house. The author of these lines successfully tried this method on his nephews. It equally captures an 11-year-old fifth grader, and 7-year-old girls, and even a 2.5-year-old boy who, showing miracles of endurance, listened enthusiastically to the story from the book "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" for almost 15 minutes. And when his grandfather began to loudly ask about what they were all doing here, the child who still could not really speak put his index finger to his mouth and said: “Shh!”

3. Read until the most interesting part - and stop

Use the same trick as screenwriters with directors of good series. Usually an episode or an entire season ends at some unexpected, climactic moment, forcing viewers to wait weeks or months to continue, discussing almost every frame of the last episode. The same can be done in reading books: the child will look forward to continuing. And many simply cannot stand it and will ask to be taught to read as quickly as possible in order to find out how it all ended. If you apply this method to a child who already knows how to read, then for sure he will look for a book the next morning and read it himself.

4. Let the child choose books himself

Today, publishers make such beautiful covers for children's books, they are so colorful that they are sure to attract the attention of even the most selective child. Try to teach your child to be surrounded by books everywhere. Go with them to bookstores and let them wander through the rows of books, explore all the shelves. Take the kids to the library, show them how beautiful it can be. And if the library turns out to be large, then any preschooler or student will be impressed for a long time by its size, beauty and views from the windows.

5. Lead by example

This is probably the key piece of advice. Parents should read for themselves. Otherwise, the likelihood that their children will be carried away by reading is extremely small. Let children from an early age regularly see you with a book in their hands, read and study your home library.

6. Introduce your teenager to book apps

There is nothing wrong with reading electronic books instead of classic paper books. And if the phone has already become a natural and integral extension of the hands of your children, then let them use it to good use. Invite them to download, for example, the Bookmate app. This is not just a reader with a huge library. It is also a real social network for book lovers, where they can find new friends, share experiences and exchange bookshelves.

7. Draw parallels between the characters and yourself, find common and different things

Compare literary characters with yourself, relatives, friends and, of course, with the child himself. Ask him a question: “How are you like the Little Prince? And what makes you different? And what would you do in his place, if you met the Fox? These and similar questions fuel interest in the content of a novel, short story, or fairy tale.

8. Make an adventure out of a book and look for secret meanings in it

A good book always has room for riddles. And if a student reads, for example, Jules Verne, then they are there on almost every page of any work. But you can ask yourself other questions as well. How to get Oblomov off the couch? How to help Mumu escape from Gerasim and save her from death?

9. Illustrations for a book can change attitudes towards it

Sometimes it is important for a young reader to see the main characters and the places where they live. Pictures, drawings, graphics - all this can be of great help. And if your child is not even interested in Harry Potter, then he is unlikely to refuse the same book, recently published with illustrations by British artist Jim Kay. His drawings amazed even JK Rowling. They are so beautiful, bright and exciting that you want to look at and study them all the time. They interest and captivate, giving room for fantasy and imagination. And this is what we need.

10. Choose the right books

Of course, all ages are submissive to many books. But if you want to get your child interested in reading, then "Deniska's stories" by Viktor Dragunsky or "Journey around the world in 80 days" by the same Jules Verne will be among the best examples. But if your 15-year-old son says that he doesn’t want to read novels written by “long-dead, gray-haired and bearded old men from the century before last,” then advise him, for example, the book Outcasts, a classic of American literature recently translated into Russian for the first time. Its author Susan Hinton wrote The Outcasts when she was 18 years old (she started writing at 15), and the main characters of the novel are from 14 to 20 years old. Despite the writer's young age, Hinton's book became a bestseller with a total circulation of more than 20 million copies.