Nurturing Lifetime Readers (Student Reading ‪)‬

When was the last time one of your past students visited you and said, "Thanks to you, I continue to read for pleasure"? This beautiful compliment suggests that you stimulated the love of reading, which had a real impact on your student. It also suggests that you did not get lost in the potential minutiae of everyday stresses, such as curricular standards, skills teaching, testing requirements, and testing preparation. Instead, you found time to promote the big picture by encouraging the vitally important habit of reading. Not surprisingly, an important part of becoming literate is to develop the lifetime reading habit. As children engage in wide and varied reading, they develop real-world and content-specific knowledge, they connect skills to meaningful and interesting contexts, and they experience a variety of expository, narrative, descriptive, and poetic texts. Just as important, children come to realize that reading can be informational and enjoyable. How can we promote the love of reading, which can help children develop the habit of reading? Although effective teachers use a repertoire of activities and strategies to support their students' lifetime literacy, certain ones are particularly influential.