My English II class has a state reading comprehension test. Now, I can go over all the tips and testing strategies, but when it comes down to it, a student must read and read often to improve their reading comprehension skills. But how do you go about it with students who hate to read or struggle with reading disabilities or both? Sure, classroom reading with questions and a test is a standard and one that is a necessity in our line of work, but it is not always effective, especially when a kid would has already learned that it is easier to take a low grade on reading assignments.
My solution is nothing new. You may even have a version of it you do yourself, but here is my version that you can feel free to borrow and change up as you wish.
The idea behind this challenge is that they just read for the sake of reading. No questions. The only thing I have to measure if they read or not is the grade they give it and the signature from themselves and a parent/guardian verifying that it was completed. Can students cheat on this? Yes. However, I am willing to take that risk because the students that don't cheat will come out with more reading under their belt.
The beauty of this challenge is that they get to pick the direction they want to go with it. There are plenty of big point items for actual books and also plenty of smaller point-value items to get them going (anything from poem to Wikipedia article to cereal box). I just want them reading. It also helps to have a small in class library and to give them time in class for reading. We play with time spans from ten minutes to twenty minutes - building up as we go to give them practice on stamina.
I've found this to be very successful in the past. It gets tweaked every so often. When I had English I, I would always throw the driver's ed manual in the mix too.
Do you have a reading challenge? Tell me about it in the comments!
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