School-wide Strategies for Promoting the Love of Reading

Considering the technological developments of the last century, the spread of the Internet, social media and a lot of other time-consuming tools, reading has started to lose its weight and role in modern society. This has been creating a lot of challenges for the schools, as most students are unwilling to read thick books from the previous centuries. They prefer reading short summaries, social media posts, key points, etc.

Today, schools are trying to adapt their teaching resources and tools to meet the needs and the interests of the students and keep the level of education to its standard. As was the case with online schools which started to provide nice quality education using online platforms, similar things had been happening with the promotion of reading.

Below, I will describe some tested things that work throughout the schools in Armenia.

A Reading Day

There are several schools that have started to use this method to get the students to read a book. Every month some schools announce a “reading day” when each student should read a short story, a book, a couple of poems, etc. The school day is cut short, so that the students have the time to read those. The idea here is to promote the love for reading and get the students going. Once they do, we all know that books have the magic to draw to themselves and not to let go. This has been working quite successfully so far and a lot of students have been enjoying the process.

A Poetry Reciting Competition

There are also several poetry competitions like there are olympiads in schools nowadays. The organizing committee chooses a couple of authors and poems that will be recited. Schools create a poll among the students who would like to participate or propose the students themselves. A month is allocated for the students to learn the poem, recite with the teacher, maybe create a local group of judges to give them feedback and them to participate in the competition, The best reciter wins and is awarded by a certificate, a medal, etc.

Project-based Learning

Some schools also exercise this brilliant idea of combining two subjects together by giving the students a chance to score credits for both subjects by working on an integrated project. The last project I had a pleasure to participate in was between Armenian literature, English and Soft Skills. Students were supposed to read a book in Armenian and summarize it in English. Some of them even created a short animated video on the characters of the book, a presentation, etc. This was very interesting for all the parties involved as it created a kind of a community and put learning into a context.

Literature lessons

Schools all over the world have this experience of reading in class. The best thing here is that students have a chance to allocate a designated amount of time to their reading and earning credits as a motivation. In time, love for reading emerges on its own. There are also independent reading clubs where students can go after lessons, read a book as a group and then get together to discuss the events, the moral, the message of the book, the historical period, etc.

Guest Readers

Inviting guest readers is another great way of promoting reading among school students. They can be known people who are famous among the students (actors, actresses, singers, writers). Students mostly love social events like this and will copy from the people they like and respect. Saying this, we need to remember that students learn a lot from their teachers. So, if a school wide culture is developed by devoting a special hour for reading for the students and the staff, it will be much more effective.