My heart broke when a former student’s mom told me that her now 6th grade son, Dan, didn’t like to read anymore. I literally cried out, “NO! What happened? He used to love to read in first grade!” He told his mom, “The teacher assigns all of our books, and the only reason we read in school is to take a test.” We are losing our readers when they do not have the opportunity to pick their own books and when every book they read is attached to an assignment.

While there is a time and place for reading assignments and grades, I believe that we, as teachers, are failing our students if the only purpose of reading is for a grade!
Fostering a Love of Reading in Students
Here are some ways that you can foster a love of reading in your students:
Allow students to pick their book
One of the best ways to foster a love of reading is to allow students to pick books to read that interest them. Student choice is a powerful way to engage our learners. For my student’s independent reading, I never assigned their books. They had complete ownership of choosing the books that they wanted to read from our classroom library.
I encouraged them to try different books and even told them that it is ok if they don’t like a book. My husband and I are both readers, but we like very different kinds of books. Our students are the same way—our classroom is unique and wonderfully diverse. We can’t expect our kids to like the same books as everyone else.
Have a robust and diverse library
Students need access to quality books. My students knew that reading was highly valued in our classroom. I worked hard to continually grow and add books to our classroom library, which was possible even on a budget! (One of the ways I did this was through using Scholastic Book Club points.) In order to encourage a love of reading in students, it is important to have a diverse library of books.
I taught my students that, “Everyone is different, and different is the beauty of life!”—our classroom libraries must reflect this! I even told my students that there are books in the library that I don’t enjoy reading, and that is okay! For example, I don’t like snake books at all—they creep me out, but some of my kids love them, so it was important to include those in our classroom library.

Model a love of reading
When our students see our love for reading, it helps spark a love of reading in their hearts, too. One of my favorite ways to model a love of reading was through reading to them every day! There are so many benefits to reading aloud to our kids, and with a little creativity, it is possible to fit read-alouds into our already full schedules!
Build relationships with students as readers
Relationships are foundational to every classroom! One of the first questions I asked my readers was, “What do you like?” because learning their interests helped me be able to direct them toward books they could like in our classroom library. If we don’t know our kids, we can’t recommend new books or authors they may like. While I allowed my kids to choose their own books to read, I loved recommending and introducing them to new books that they could love too!
Encouraging a love of reading in our students takes some work, but it is so worth it! I’m also excited to share that Dan, the student I talked about at the beginning, now gives reading for fun another chance. I couldn’t stand the thought that he wasn’t reading anymore on his own, so I recommended one of my favorite chapter books to him to try, and he loved it. (Margaret Peterson Haddix “Among the Hidden”)
The beauty of building relationships with our students is that even though he wasn’t in my classroom anymore, our students are always our kids! He even recommended and shared one of his favorite books with me. Books are not just grades; books are stories that change us and bring us together!
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