How to develop reading skills in School

If you’re interested in improving your reading abilities at school, here are a few easy and helpful methods to assist students in developing their reading skills.

Teachers, parents, and mentors can inspire kids to enjoy reading by using activities that concentrate on enhancing their reading skills. Sometimes, kids might not like reading, especially when it’s connected to school lessons and difficult subjects. However, reading is very important, especially for students.

These are practical tips for students who are learning how to develop reading skills in school, compiled by loftyscholars.com.

1. Create targets for Reading

Motivate students to create their personal reading targets, so they feel responsible for how they’re getting better at reading. This will make them more conscious of their progress and push them to work harder to get better.

2. Let your students choose how they read

Give your students the freedom to read in the way that works best for them. People learn differently, so it’s good to let each student pick how they want to read and learn. Teachers can make special reading activities for each student’s style of learning. This can help students understand hard stuff better.

Adding more reading activities to classwork can help students get better at words, writing, fixing problems, paying attention, and thinking. These skills are important for learning in the future.

3. Tell your students to connect what they read with things in their life

Suggest that your students pick something they read and see how it’s like other things, like books, movies, news, or TV shows. They can compare how these different things talk about the same topic.

Ask them what parts they liked and how they would make it better to fit the topic.

Also, help them find what the writer wanted to say to the reader or viewer. When students link what they read with their own life, it helps them think about the material in a creative way.

4. Show your students how to use a highlighter or underline

Tell your students to mark the important stuff while they read. Tell them to write notes on the pages to help them pay attention and understand better.

They can also write down questions if something is confusing or if they don’t know a word.

5. Read bit by bit

If something you have to read is really long and hard, you can split it into smaller parts. This makes it easier to understand. When you talk about it in class, you’ll remember more.

This also helps you feel better about understanding tough stuff.

6. Use different types of things to read

When you teach reading, use different kinds of things like books, magazines, audiobooks, CDs, and other recorded readings. This helps students understand and enjoy the reading in various ways.

For example, you can have students listen to an audiobook while reading along. This makes reading more interesting because they can see and hear the words at the same time. Also, you can use special computer programs that read the text out loud. This can change how reading works, helping students focus on sentences and words without feeling like the text is too hard to understand.

7. Getting to know usual topics

To make learning more interesting, ask your students to look for examples of a specific idea throughout the chapter. Tell them to talk about what they find with the class. This will help everyone understand that idea better.

8. Relate the information to everyday life

Students can learn better when they relate the material to their own lives. Ask them to write down how the text connects to their experiences. You can also help them understand the text by showing how it relates to things happening in the world right now.

9. Include more of your senses

Using our senses can help us learn better. If you’re a teacher, you can help your students understand things more easily by suggesting a few things.

First, tell them to underline or write notes on the paper as they read. This will help them see and touch the information, which can make it stick in their minds.

Also, take turns reading out loud in class. This way, students can listen to the words and say them themselves. This can help them remember better.

You can also show things like pictures on a screen or videos in class. This can make learning more fun and help students remember more. For instance, if you’re talking about something in class, showing a video about it can help students understand better because they can see and hear at the same time.

10. Enjoy playing around with words

Encourage students to have fun with words by having them write down new or unfamiliar words from their reading assignments on index cards. When they come to class, discuss these words as a group until everyone understands what they mean and how they’re used.

Also, students can show off their index cards on a bulletin board to prove they’ve learned these difficult words. Depending on how the class is structured, these cards can be used later for writing lessons to help students improve their vocabulary.

11. Make a note to track how things are getting better or changing for the good.

Encourage students to keep a special journal that’s all about their reading journey. In this journal, they should make a list of the books or articles they’ve read, and write a short summary of each one.

Create a part in the journal where they can write down words or phrases that were hard to understand, and another part for parts of the reading that were tricky to figure out. Also, they can share what they thought about the reading – what they liked and didn’t like, and if they want to read more things by the same author.

Every so often, take a look at these journals together with the students. This is a way to recognize how they’re getting better at reading and to celebrate the cool things they’ve achieved. These journals can also be shown to parents and teachers when they have meetings to talk about how the students are doing.

FAQ on How to develop reading skills in school 

What is the most effective reading strategy? 

Read the text with a goal in mind. Look at the beginning to get an idea. Find the most important idea. Come up with questions about it.

How long should a student read in a day?

A student has 3 hours for reading. This can include school stuff. If not, then there’s 1 hour for reading.

What activities can help a student improve his or her reading skills?

Make the content about you, set goals for how much you want to read. Use a highlighter for important parts. Play around with words to enjoy the process.