The following is an excerpt taken from It’s Not Complicated! by Phyllis C. Hunter, internationally renowned literacy expert and speaker at the upcoming Scholastic Reading Summit, being held in Chicago on March 13-14. Follow @ScholasticTeach and #ReadingSummit to join the Reading Summit conversation!
What I Know For Sure #2: When Our Kids Are Motivated to Read, It Can Change Their Lives
I hear it all the time: kids these days don’t like to read; kids these days are lazy; kids these days spend all their time playing video games. Well, guess what? It’s not true. Kids these days are reading and writing as much as ever . . . and in some cases, more than ever. It all depends on a simple question: What do we consider reading? If we’re talking Hamlet or the Federalist Papers, kids may not be reading as much. But if we recognize the time they spend on the Internet and with social media as opportunities for reading and writing, then the number of minutes kids these days spend on both is not declining.
Philip wasn’t a good reader. He didn’t like to read. But he liked to run, so he begged his mom and his dad to let him run and compete in an upcoming 2K race. His dad said, “You can’t run in a 2K race without me.” So his dad went out with him and when the gun fired, Phillip took off like a shot and left his father in the dust. After that, his dad let him run by himself. Phillip joined a runner’s club. He was the youngest in the club. And he loved it so much that he didn’t mind obeying his parents’ rule that he get his homework done before he ran. His love of running taught him discipline. And it taught him how to read because he wanted to read about Jesse Owens’ life and the lives of other famous runners. He was motivated to read because of his interest in running. That passion came first; his interest in reading, second, but ultimately, they worked together to propel Philip to both personal and academic success.
Motivation Makes the Reading World Go Round
No reading program is complete if it doesn’t include motivation. It’s that simple. Of course I agree that a comprehensive reading program needs to cover the basics: phonemic and phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary development, comprehension strategies, fluency, and automaticity. But even with all that, a program will be incomplete if it doesn’t incorporate motivation. Good teachers already know that.
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Students can operate at the top of their game or somewhere in the middle. And you, as their teacher, parent, or school administrator matter hugely in getting them to operate at the top of their game. There are a hundred ways to tell students that they’ve done something well, to spotlight their successes, and to encourage them to be aware of their own progress: “You know, this is where you were three weeks ago, and here you are now.” Or, “You’ve added this many words to your vocabulary. Do you know that people need to know thousands and thousands of words to be good readers? Now you’re one step closer to that. We’re biting off one word at a time.” The goal is to get our kids—at all levels of ability—to see that they have to begin somewhere, and to get them to say, “Today, I begin.”
--Phyllis C. Hunter
