How to Encourage Children to Read?

With the proper measures, children can connect to reading before preschool.

Reading is an invaluable didactic reinforcement. In previous articles, we have talked about the skills that children develop thanks to adopting a taste for frequent reading. Reading comprehension, language skills, critical thinking, imagination, tolerance of different ideas, and more are just some of the benefits of this practice. It has also been commented that the activity is not actually in decline; instead, the reading material quality is at risk. Reading social media content for three hours does not match the contributions of a well-structured story or novel.

If we want to encourage the habit and the love of reading to the youngest, we can not stay stuck in the conversation about content quality. It is necessary to become aware of our role as ambassadors and question what strategies we use to present reading as an exciting and fun activity that invites us to adopt it as a hobby. Below we share some recommendations.

What to do before starting?

The journey to establish reading as a hobby does not begin from the age when students can start reading. Preparation can start much earlier, and through early practices, we significantly increase the chances of instilling a taste for reading in children.

The Reading Rockets initiative recommends talking to children to develop language comprehension and expression skills in the zero to four-year age bracket. Read to them 30 minutes per day, sing songs, and recite poems with rhymes and repetitive sounds to help them form linguistic patterns. It is necessary to ensure that nursery staff or caregivers also read to them. If parents and adults are models of the reading habit, it is easier to instill this habit. Library visits also help children become accustomed to books and receive the opportunity to choose works to their liking and form their unique tastes.

And those who can already read?

For students in primary education onwards, who are already old enough to learn to read and acquire the habit, there are recommendations to potentiate their engagement with this helpful activity. Teaching them how to use their school’s library as a resource opens the door to hundreds of reading choices. Once they have this variety at their disposal, it is essential to allow them to choose the books they like, but always with an open channel to a conversation about the contents chosen and always with a guide in the face of the new knowledge and experiences linked to responsible reading. Such a guide can continue to be an example of a good reader who reaps the educational and recreational benefits and links reading with the practice and improvement of writing and expression of ideas.

It is also essential that heads of households are familiar with the reading programs in schools, both the contents and the strategies employed. They can reinforce the work of teachers, considering the children’s interests in what they like to read and how they prefer to do it. Learning to read in school and perform the assigned readings is just the beginning; teachers must ensure that the children receive all the cognitive and developmental benefits. Understanding this and bringing the activity closer to the children on their terms can impact them so that the reading habit will accompany them all their lives.

Do you have children at home at an age to learn to read? What methods and contents do you use? If you teach, what program do you have at your school? Do you complement it in any way? Let us know in the comments.

Translation by Daniel Wetta

Sofía García-Bullé

Share

This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0