Boosting Middle School Students’ Motivation to Read

In his 2009 book Readicide, Kelly Gallagher argued that some ways reading skills are taught have the potential to kill students’ love of reading. I took that to heart and want to share some ideas about making reading relevant and authentic for middle school students—strategies I use to help motivate them to want to read.

Motivation is part of reading, as is close and careful work on the mechanics of the process itself. For middle school readers and beyond, increasing interest in reading can be tricky. After all, these students have had many experiences with schooling and different approaches to reading instruction. Here are some tips for teachers who are thinking about increasing their focus on literacy this school year.

The importance of informational text (and inquiry)

By building on inquiry, teachers can shape genuine purpose for reading beyond the tropes of narrative. Possibilities exist for further literacy connections by approaching reading through an inquiry-framed viewpoint, as discussed in the book Inquiry Units for English Language Arts. If your school or school system already requires a grade-level research project of any sort, the marriage with inquiry is a step waiting to happen.

Many of the complex and challenging texts that students encounter will be nonfiction, and reading in the classroom can be planned in response to that. As students get older, they’re developing and refining areas of interest, testing ideas, and picturing themselves more and more as adults. This isn’t to say that interest can always overcome significant reading needs—but it absolutely helps to be working on areas of literacy development along with texts that students find engaging. Without this ingredient of engagement, the journey becomes even more arduous. 

In terms of relevance, building a case behind a genre-focused study might be more tenuous unless the text addresses the “just right” issues that students are facing. This is work that can indeed be accomplished, but opening up access to nonfiction allows for any number of connections that mirror the kinds of texts that students will encounter for the majority of their adult lives.

Celebrate reading widely

School and evening community-wide initiatives are one way to encourage reading. It’s important for reading to be normalized as an activity for everyone. This was something that was modeled for me at home as a young person and is certainly a move that can be made as a wider initiative. Celebrating at-home literacy practices in English and across languages is a literacy must-do.

But reading across communities or even languages is not the sum total of what I have in mind here. Readers who are familiar with my research interests will likely know that I have a keen interest in connecting students to reading experiences through a variety of texts. As I continue to reflect on and connect with my teaching practices, I’m surprised to find that I am consistently traditional in certain ways.

For example, I believe that to teach reading, kids need to be reading. With so many types of texts available, part of the work is done for us as teachers. From literacy around the worlds of gaming to graphic novels and more, reading is a digital, creative, and expansive endeavor. When I begin working with students in reading or writing, mentor texts are one of the places I often go. Whether working with nonfiction or fiction, I show students that certain elements are very similar.

In a teaching routine with the text A Wish in the Dark, by Christina Soontornvat, for example, I invite students to consider what they encounter on the first page of the book. I begin with some of the questions that you also probably ask about a text: 

1. What do you notice about this world?

2. Does it sound like the world you know or a different kind of place?

3. Who are the characters? Who do you think is the protagonist, and what do they do that makes you believe so? What other perspectives might exist or details might you need?

4. What do these characters want and what seems to be in their way?

In many ways, these are questions that can be applied to texts across content areas. Much of our human story involves solving a problem or overcoming an obstacle, which sometimes leads to another problem that needs to be addressed. I’m also comfortable teaching a portion of a book without teaching the entirety of the text so that students can get a taste and read more if they are intrigued.

Guiding Students to Compose Their Own Stories 

As Toni Morrison famously suggested, write the story you want to read. Stories can be sources of healing, escape, processing, and comfort. They can also be ripe places for creativity. 

While working in online spaces for reading tutoring with graduate student mentees, I’ve found that encouraging older readers who are striving to write and engage with their own story-making is a liberating and encouraging process. Composing is a frequently recurring theme in my teaching and work. Helping students write a plan of advocacy and sharing their lived experiences for healing and building community expands what reading, writing, and literacy can be about.

Students who experience significant difficulty with content will often act out. They’ll work hard to avoid the tasks that they don’t feel confident about. Who can blame them? I wouldn’t want to spend all day every day performing a task in front of my peers that I didn’t feel good about and that could be, in fact, embarrassing. 

Tending to students who are still working through fundamental reading processes can be done compassionately and artfully—and for the reader who isn’t readily engaging with any text at all, opening up composing with a variety of tools can be a step in a positive direction.

As teachers, we know that this is careful and critical work. As we begin the new school year, I hope these ideas can be ground from which more ideas germinate—maybe taking yet another step toward dealing with readicide.