Positive Attitudes Towards Reading

The video that we watched was very personable to me. When I was a student in high school, I was just like all of those students who held up their signs saying they truly only read 1-3 required books for their class. I used Sparknotes, listened to class discussions, or quickly asked my friends what the book was about before entering the classroom. From watching the video, it was amazing to see the change in amount of books the students read by just letting them choose. Reflecting back on my own personal experience and being a teacher now, I couldn’t agree more to let a child pick which book they want to read. I would so rather have a child choose the book, then force them to read. This will only cause them to not want to read and push them away from being able to love reading. As soon as I was given the choice of what topics interest me and which books I would like to read, I couldn’t stop putting a book down. I absolutely love the quote at the end of the video from Nancie Atwell, “The job of adults who care about reading is to move heaven and earth to put that book into a child’s hand.” Our job as teachers, who love and care about reading, should be willing to do anything to help our students want to learn. All the research I have done on motivation for reading is giving a child time and choice. If we give them these two components, then we can create many more avid readers!