"Why should I read?" Can your students answer that question? Do they have trouble seeing the importance that reading may have in their lives? Are they lacking motivation, both in academic and recreational reading? Do you think you can effectively teach reading strategies if students don't understand the benefits of literacy?
In Reading Reasons, Kelly Gallagher offers a series of mini-lessons specifically tailored to motivate middle and high school students to read, and in doing so, to help them understand the importance and relevance reading will take in their lives. This book introduces and explains in detail nine specific "real-world" reasons why students should be readers.
The book contains forty practical, classroom-tested and reproducible mini-lessons that get to the heart of reading motivation and that can be used immediately in English (as well as other content-area) classrooms. These easy-to-use motivational lessons serve as weekly reading "boostershots" that help maintain reading enthusiasm in your classroom from September through June. The mini-lessons, ranging from five to twenty minutes in length, hit home with adolescents, and in turn, enable them to internalize the importance reading will play in their lives. Rather than telling students reading is good for them, the lessons in this book show them the benefits of reading.
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Author Bio
Since 1985, Kelly Gallagher has devoted himself to the teaching of reading, writing, listening and speaking—first and foremost, as a high school ELA teacher in Anaheim, California, and also as a author/consultant who works with educators around the world. Today, he is considered one of the leading voices in literacy education.
Always in search of a better way, Kelly honed his craft by taking on leadership positions in several key literacy programs, including the California Reading and Literature Project, the South Basin Writing Project at California State University, Long Beach, and the Puente Project, a University of California outreach program that prepares under-represented high school students for transition into universities. For several years, he taught secondary literacy courses as an adjunct professor at California State University, Fullerton, and, most recently, he served as the president of the Secondary Reading Group of the International Literacy Association (ILA).