Reading is one of the most important skills to learn. When students learn to read the world is open to them. They can learn anything they want. So how can you plan fun reading activities for kids?
Try these Fun Reading Activities
1. Give Choice
This reading BINGO is one of my favorite reading logs. I love that it teaches genres and opens readers to a variety of literature. Once they finish have students write a review or a summary of their favorite book, or for younger students – draw a picture of their favorite book.
Learn more here – What Is Fiction
2. Read Aloud
Read alouds are another fun reading activity. These give you the opportunity to model reading. This is the time to really assess if they have that movie going on in their heads. You are never too old to hear a great story.
3. Use Multiple Formats to Make Reading Fun
There are so many great ways to get access to books. Here a few of my favorites:
- The School Library (FREE) – Of course this is the obvious one, but did you know that many school libraries now have eBooks and audio books. These are great over the summer because you can still check these out.
- Public Library (FREE) – So this is another obvious one, but there are so many ways to access resources that I am sure that you haven’t heard about. Take an afternoon to go visit your local library. They actually have a lot going on.
- OverDrive (FREE) – So how do you read these school library books? Use OverDrive. All you have to do is download the app, create a FREE account, and add the libraries you have accounts with to the app. Just do a search and it will bring it up. Right now I have both my local library and my school library on my app. Just make sure you have your username and password ready each time you sign in.
To give you a quick recap of how I am currently using OverDrive – My audiobook was downloaded on the app. I can listen to it at any time. My ebook, I chose to read in the Kindle App so I could download it to read anywhere. But I can also just read it in my browser.
Most resources in Overdrive are available for two weeks and then they automatically erase from your devices. No losing materials, no overdue fines! Awesome right?!
Even More Formats to Make Reading Fun
- Epic (PAID) – EPIC has tons of great books for kids. This is a paid service, but if you do a little search they usually have a promotion going on. Most summers they have a 3 months in one option. And many schools have an account so the kids have access to this at school. The thing I love about EPIC is that it has a read-to-me option. I have two emerging readers at home and they want me to read to them all of the time. When I am driving, that is tough. So on long trips they can have the books read to them. You can also create assignments of books for kids to read.
- TumbleBooks – This is a FREE resource available through school and public libraries. Just log into your local library site and check it out!
4. Use Fun Bookmarks
These bookmarks have been a great addition. The kids love to color these for fun, but I get the chance to review reading strategies and assign a purpose for reading. Each month includes reading strategies of prior knowledge, visualization, inferring, retelling and MORE. Set the purpose for your entire reading group, or make a different one for each group member and let each student have a different task for reading. Also included are story elements, and reading logs. Below are the January and February bookmarks. You can also grab the entire bundle HERE!
5. Build Fluency in Younger Readers with Sight Word Stories
Sight Word Stories are a great way to help kids build fluency. The majority of the words are those sight words or popcorn words that young readers are learning. These resources have the story, games, and practice pages to review the sight words.
Check out these Sight Word Stories:
6. Encourage note-taking and highlighting with older readers.
This is a great way to give them a chance to show thinking. There are many articles to access online. Most schools have an online database that kids use at school. These have tons of articles that are age-appropriate and deemed valid resources by the district.
To make this a fun reading activity take something of interest to the reader and let them begin reading about a topic they enjoy.
With many schools going one-to-one with technology resources, kids can access these articles on a device and practice highlighting important terms and phrases. This is a good strategy to get them started on note-taking.
Have students that need more hands-on with this strategy? Try these:
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