Reading Habit

The overall purpose of the article “Getting Students Hooked on the Reading Habit” by Linda B. Gambrell, is to help get students to become motivated about learning, but more specifically to get them motivated for reading. This article tries to explain the importance of making sure that students are motivated about reading and states that “reading proficiency has been linked to a better and more productive academic, social, and civic life” (Gambrell). The article stresses the importance that the more motivated the students are about reading, the more they will read and become more proficient readers. The article it states that while it is important to teach students to read, it is equally important that they develop a love of independent reading.

From personal observation to primary documents and proving the results from quantitative data. The author provides multiple forms of evidence for every argument that they have. With, at the very least, two different sources to back them up. The author does an excellent job of providing support data to back up their arguments.

Some theoretical issues that this article could raise is what are some ways to get your students motivated in reading. Another theoretical topic could also be, what are some ways you can get a student motivated in the topic when what you are already doing is not working. It could also raise the question of what you could do to motivate the students using real world activities that they are already have interest

Teachers need to find ways to get their students more interested in reading. In the article, Gambrell mentions a classroom that uses a “Twitter Board” to get the students more involved and interested. The idea comes from the social media website that the students are probably already aware of, it takes the idea of writing a short 140-character explanation, question, or discussion that the student may have about a book or story on a sticky note, putting a spot on the bottom for responses, and putting it on the board for other students to read and respond to. I thought that this was a great idea, it causes the students to become more interested in the reading by making it feel more fun for them. I feel like this is a better idea than to have them write summaries over and over that makes them lose their motivation. I hope to use this idea in some shape or form in my classroom to motivate my students to be more interested in the reading.

Overall, I felt as though this was a well written article with several good ideas and points. There are not many professional articles that I enjoy reading, but this one is one of them. I felt as though the author provided a lot of professional evidence and several different tests and student experiment data to support their arguments. The author was able to get their point across without dragging it on for too long