Love of Reading Month
Here are some great ways to get your pupils moving toward a lifelong love of reading.
By Elisa Jackson
You can celebrate a "Love of Reading Month" in your classroom in honor of Dr. Seuss' birthday in March, or just because you'd like to. That means your students should be reading books, books, and more books! However, you don’t want your students to get burnt out by just reading to themselves, so here are some different ways to make reading fun.
The Race to Read
The first activity is a reading contest. Students can record the titles of books, number of hours, or pages read each day, and compete against each other to see how many they can read during the month. The teacher should provide a reading chart that parents can fill out each night and send in at the end of each week. The student or students that read the most in the month, can get some kind of prize (homework pass, lunch with the teacher, tickets to a movie of their choice, etc . . .). Not only does this provide healthy competition, it also helps students improve their fluency!
Calling All Volunteers!
The next activity involves having volunteers come in and read to your students. The volunteers could be family members and school staff, or city officials and fire fighters. This can show students that people from all walks of life read as part of their jobs and for pleasure. It will bring home the idea that no matter what they end up doing as adults, it will involve reading. You can send students home with a parent sign up, and send letters out to community members to see if they are interested in visiting your class. Many people in service jobs, like police officers, firemen, and even the mayor might be interested.
Shoe Box Project
A fun way to express your class’s love of reading, is to have them pick their favorite book, and instead of writing a book report, create a shoe box diorama. In this shoe box, students can include items from the book that you choose. If you are focusing on characterization, they can make the diorama all about the main character of their book. If you are focusing on setting, the diorama should represent the setting or settings in the book. Students can decorate these dioramas with simple items like construction paper, or items from a craft store if they choose. As long as they follow your guidelines, this can turn into a very fun and creative activity that allows them to share their books with the class.
Decorate Your Door
The entire school could also get involved in Love of Reading Month. To do this, your school could have a door decorating contest. Students in every class could pick a book or genre to focus on that is grade appropriate. Then, they could decorate the door to their classroom with different drawings, essays, or crafts they have made to represent their chosen book. Once the doors are decorated, they can be judged on creativity, student input, and representation of the book. In the end, there can be two winners: one for the lower grades and one for the upper grades. These winners could win a party of their choice. Here are more activities to do with your class to celebrate the Love of Reading Month.
Love of Reading Month Activities and Lessons:
Read about Spring and answer short answer questions about it. This could be a group or individual activity.
Assigned during class, or for homework, have your students create a bulletin board of books they love to read. Then, have your students share their bulletins with the rest of the class.
Students participate in the Read to Feed Project which provides a family with an animal. This would be a fabulous school-wide project as well.
Explore different ways to share books. Advertising and making lists are just a few to name.