How can reading teachers get middle school students more actively engaged in reading?

Designed By: Laquitha Dean

In today’s society students are surrounded by technology. Middle school students are not actively engaged in reading.

Is this based on the teaching curriculum, how reading is used and demonstrated in the classroom and at home or is it

based on the amount of parental involvement.

The Goal

This presentation is created to find out what drives middle school students to not be actively engaged in reading, within the classroom and outside.

This presentation will explore strategies and resources that students, parents and teachers can utilize in order to become actively engaged in reading.

This is a problem because if students do not comprehend or are interested in what they have read, then the literacy levels will continually decrease as the students increase in grade level.

Strategies teachers can use for middle school students to become actively

engaged in reading…

Scaffolding: An effective teacher scaffolds to help the student move from what he or

she already knows to new learning.

•Choosing text at the student’s instructional level so that the text is challenging but capable of being read with support.

• Providing a partial response to a question and asking the student or students to complete it.

• Acknowledging a partially correct response and helping the student correct or refine it.

• Organizing tasks into smaller steps.

• Connecting the topic of instruction to students’ prior knowledge and experience.

• Providing hints rather than telling a student an answer when he/she does not respond

Activities that involve and engage students are ones where they are

manipulating the information physically and mentally. Students need to be

moving around, working in groups, and discovering information for themselves.

Stay away from chalkboard lectures

Let students make artifacts from a culture they are studying or give a speech

as a famous historical person or a character from their novel.

Give students the opportunity to act out 5

plus 3 or 10 divided by 5.

Create centers for students to visit and complete an activity that meets one of

your learning objectives.

Create mobiles that represent information. When students read a novel or a section in the

textbook, have them draw pictures that illustrate the concept or events and hang it on a

mobile. Make a class paper chain of information. Each student writes one fact on a strip of construction paper. Have the class stand in front of the room.

The first student reads their strip and then folds it in a circle while you staple it. The next student reads their fact and then attaches their strip to the chain. Continue through the entire class.

Strategies for Teachers, Students and Parents

Keep your student organized. It's helpful to hang a weekly schedule on the fridge to keep track

of upcoming tests and project due dates. "Make sure kids' binders are not falling apart or stuffed with loose papers

Preserve reading rituals. Encourage your child to read to you, too. Maybe she'll want to quiz

you from a movie trivia book or read you portions of an interview with her favorite star. It's also relaxing to save some time at the

end of the day for everyone to gather in the family room and read silently

Squeeze in book talk. Middle school students may pretend to resent your interest, but

they secretly love knowing that you're taking the time to talk to them about their books."

Role of Parental Involvement

This is a great website for parents and teachers to utililize. It helps them understand how to actively engaged their

students in reading. For more teacher and parental involvement strategies the word below.

Stage 30

K-W-L Chart

The K-W-L Chart is great for teachers to use when getting middle school

students actively engage in reading. It focuses on prior and future knowledge.

K-What I Know W-What I want to Know

L-What I learned

The PBS website is great for middle school reading teachers to use within the classroom. It showcases interactive videos, songs, and curriculum that are designed to actively engage middle school students in reading. The site allows teachers to demonstrate different strategies and use resources for effective lesson planning. Click on the link below to view the website.

http://www.pbs.org/teachers/

PBS

The most common way that student engagement is measured is through information reported by the students themselves. Other methods include checklists and rating scales completed by teachers, observations, work sample analyses, and case studies.

Teachers interested in assessing student engagement in the classroom should consider using separate measures to get at the cognitive, affective, and behavioral aspects of task engagement.

If teachers do not know how to measure, they will not be able to get students actively engaged in reading.

How is student engagement measured?

My results were that teachers and parents must become actively engaged in reading in order for

students to become actively engaged.

Technology such as I-Pods, I-Pads, computers, laptops have taken over the use of reading books, which allows the students to not have a desire in

active engagement of reading.

Students must be engaged with one another, they should have an interest in what they are reading

so that they can comprehend what they have read.

Teachers need to know their students literacy levels, in order to prepare and teacher effective

curriculum.  

In Conclusion…

References

Chapman, Elaine. (2003, September). Assessing Student Engagement Rates. Retrieved from ericdigests.org

Grant, Peggy. (200,1 November). Professional Development for Teachers of Reading. Retrieved from

www.learningpt.org Mc Donald, Emma. (2011, March). How to Involve and Engage

Students. Retrieved from www.inspiring teachers.com

PBS. (2011, March). Featured Classroom Resources. Retrieved from pbs.org

Scholastic Parents. (2011, February). Partner with your child’s middle school teachers. Retrieved from scholastic.com