I stumbled on an ingenious way to motivate my two reluctant readers. The one doesn’t like reading and will only do it if the book captures her quickly and only if the book is set down right in front of her face. The other likes to read, but has recently been sucked into text messaging, Facebook, and new favorite TV shows and doesn’t give it much time.
This school vacation the law was laid down. They had two options and only two. Which option they picked was entirely up to them.
The first option was to read a really big nonfiction book with lots and lots of pages a little bit each day. Just 2 pages was required each day for a total of 14 pages a week. If they started this way and decided later to go the other route that was fine.
The second way (and the way they both chose to go) was to read 1 book a week of their choosing during the summer. The size of the book, genre, didn’t matter.
If they failed to complete the book or the 14 pages during the week they would spend the next week without friend time and you know how disastrous that would be over the break!
A trip to the library later, and now we have about 12 books sitting in a pile for them to read. We decided more books was better than fewer books, that way if a book failed to grab them they had more options for reading material.
Have you found a completely ingenious way to motivate your reluctant readers? Please share in the comments below!