Inspiring intermediate grade readers can be challenging. For teachers in inner city schools and low-income districts, figuring out how to tap into a student’s desire to read can be even more difficult. That’s why we enlisted the help of English Professor, Robin Hartman, who shares with us some ways to encourage reading in the middle school population.
How to Engage Reluctant Middle School Students in Reading
by Robin Hartman
Creating young readers can sometimes be as easy as unlocking the imagination that new readers already possess. Reading can be second nature for many children because, through pretend play, those children already experience the need for exploring their own imaginary, self-created worlds. Opening a book and exploring someone else’s fantastical world becomes another form of play rather than a lesson on grammar, spelling, sentence structure, and literary story telling devices.
However, some children may have already lost their innocence due to the harsh reality of their lives. Thus, those children may not be able to pick up Roald Dahl’s James and the Giant Peach (1961 ) or Scott O’Dell’s Island of the Blue Dolphins (1961 ) and make any sense of it due to their inability to picture something so inconceivable to reality.
To encourage reading skills to adult-like children, I suggest using books that are set in the real world and deal with real life conflicts, such as, biographies, historical fiction, and possibly even adult literature. The emotional responses of the adult or young adult hero or heroine may connect with adult-like children more than the emotional responses of the young wizards walking the halls of a magical school.
However, that does not mean that the books targeted to older audiences should be used as a psychological tool for children dealing with abuse and/or divorce. Rather, children who have adult emotions and responsibilities, should not be given a novel about a hero or heroine who’s main goal is to outwit or out run the school bully, when they themselves may be the caretaker of the household or fulfilling the responsibilities of a parent. The hero or heroine’s conflict with the school bully seems petty in comparison to their own plight.
Don’t assume that the child’s inability to read age appropriate books is based solely on his or her understanding of the written word. In reality, the subject material could be the hindering factor. However, that does not mean the student needs no help with reading comprehension either, especially if adult literature is being used in place of young adult novels. I’m merely suggesting that handing Judy Bloom’s novel, The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo (1982), to a child struggling with Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time (1963) may not be the best solution. Some children do not have the same kind of imagination that can bend to shape a fantastical world in their mind when they see a hard reality more clearly than some adults.
Suggested Books to Use With Middle School Readers:
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelo
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor
A Girl with the Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
A Painted House by John Grisham
The Outsiders, Rumble Fish, Tex by S.E. Hinton
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet A. Jacobs
Night by Elie Wiesel
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Loves Music, Loves to Dance by Mary Higgins Clark
Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Robin Hartman is a part-time English professor who teaches Composition and Research. She has an MA in British Literature and loves researching about the life and works of Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf, D.H. Lawrence, and Jane Austen.
When she isn’t teaching, researching, or chasing around her five and six year old boys, she is making items for her Etsy shop and blogging.