Motivate the Unmotivated Reader through High Interest Reading

Last night, my son avoided reading the book his teacher sent home for us to practice reading together. Ethan is in Kindergarten, and he has great beginning reading skills. But despite his reading ability, he had no interest in reading this book. After several pages, I understood why: the book was a phonics book, focusing on a short vowel sound. The monotony of the “cat and the rat” and “man in the hat” was difficult to endure. Ethan successfully sounded out and read all of the words, but had no desire to reread the book.

As a former teacher, I understand the necessity of teaching phonics, phonemes, and word families, but I also understand why older struggling readers don’t enjoy reading phonics books. Ethan proved that even if a reader struggles to sound out words and recognize sight words, he still wants to read something interesting. And he’s only in Kindergarten!

I got out one of the products I wrote  for PCI: Word Families in the Real World. This product addresses the phonics skills of short vowel word families through high interest topics, real pictures, and simple words at low reading levels. I had my son read the short “a” word family books, which covered the same words in his school reader. Ethan was excited to read sentences describing real pictures. The comments Ethan made about the Word Families books validated what we tried to accomplish through their writing and design. Students, especially struggling readers in intermediate, middle, and high schools, don’t want to read “baby books”.

If you have a struggling reader, and want to encourage him or her to read, you have to be creative and resourceful. Find magazines, cartoons, short chapter books, or even ebooks that address interesting topics. Look for literature that has simple, one or two syllable words, short sentences, and photos or pictures that provide clues about challenging words in text. Many classic novels and plays have been revised at low reading levels. The goal is to motivate your child to read.

Ethan did read his school book again, and I signed off on it. I’m sure he’ll have more phonics readers in his future, but I plan on including a lot of high interest, low reading leveled books, too. I want him to love reading as much as I do, and I want to do everything I can to motivate him to read.