Think back to a time in your childhood when you felt captivated by a book. Which book was it? What was it about that story that captured your imagination? What feelings did it stir in you?
For most, if not all of us in literary education and leadership, we can fondly recall moments when books brought us joy—characters that made us feel seen, settings that filled us with wonder, plot twists that dropped our jaws, endings that left us yearning for more.
As literacy educators and leaders, we know that all students deserve such reading experiences. Even more, we know that all students are capable of such reading experiences. The imperative for all of us is to understand how to cultivate environments in our schools and classrooms where every student is able to find joy in reading.
In this blog post, we will explore actionable strategies to ignite a love for reading among all students.
Connecting students with the joy of reading matters now more than ever. At a time when reading for pleasure is markedly plummeting (1), proliferating misinformation is demanding more critical thinking and reading skills (2), and reading proficiency rates are dropping across the country (3), we are called to rethink how we facilitate students’ relationship to reading.
As lovers of books, we know intrinsically the power of reading; we know the joy of finding a book we cannot put down. Luckily, research helps put those personal experiences in context, illustrating the broader and long-lasting impacts of reading.
Let’s highlight some key findings from recent research to understand what’s at stake when we consider how to invest in the reading lives of our students:
When students are offered choices in their reading, the results are transformational. We know from research that choice leads to students reading more independently, developing internal motivation for reading, retaining vocabulary at higher rates, and increasing their comprehension skills.
Choice is so important because it allows students to build their own identity as readers: what genres they like, what authors they’re drawn to, what subjects they’re interested in. This creation of a reading identity is what creates lifelong readers.
Here are some practical strategies for offering choice and agency in the classroom:
Students need exposure to diverse books for choice to be meaningful. Having a classroom library that contains books of different genres, authors of different identities, and stories on different subjects ensures that students are actually afforded the opportunity of choice. It is helpful to regularly take inventory of your books to identify any potential gaps in representation.
If funding is a barrier to creating a robust classroom library, there are creative ways to stock your shelves:
With all the demands of teachers, it is understandably a challenge to create protected independent reading time in the classroom. However, without consistent opportunities for choice reading, students aren’t able to develop sustainable reading habits.
This is why setting realistic goals for protected reading time into your classroom is important. Whether it’s 15 minutes at the end of each class two days/week or 10 minutes at the start of each class three days/week, creating a set schedule for independent choice reading and sticking with it communicates to students that reading time is valuable and should be prioritized.
One way to bring joy into reading is to make it relational. A significant part of building an identity as a reader is connecting with other readers—sharing books you loved or books you hated, discovering new authors through suggestions, reveling in the mutual love of a book.
Here are some ways to intentionally build a community of readers:
Book clubs are a powerful tool for creating communities of readers and supporting students’ speaking and listening skills. There are many ways to organize book clubs: small groups of students discussing the same book, discussing different books of similar genres, discussing books written by the same author.
Regardless of how you choose to organize student book clubs, there is one central element that must remain: a low-stakes space for students to freely discuss their reading.
To emphasize student ownership and autonomy, consider allowing a rotation of students to act as moderators for their book club, making them responsible for facilitating conversations.
Book talks are a simple yet impactful way to build excitement around reading. These don’t need to be formal presentations or graded assignments. In fact, book talks are most effective when they’re brief, conversational, and low-pressure.
Here’s what that can look like: Invite students to share something they’re reading, a character they’re curious about, or even a book they chose to stop reading and why. The benefit here is that students gain access to more book titles and authors by hearing from their peers, and they can discover new connections with peers by identifying similarities in interests and reading preferences.
Joyful reading doesn’t end in the classroom; it grows when families and communities are invited into the process. Encourage simple, accessible ways for families to support reading at home: visiting the local library together, setting aside a few minutes of family reading time each week, or asking their child(ren) about choice reading time.
You might also partner with community organizations for reading nights, book swaps, or author visits. When students see reading valued in the spaces they care about most, their motivation and engagement naturally deepen.
Reading becomes joyful when it feels personally relevant, culturally meaningful, or linked to real-world interests. While tools like book trackers and reading journals can serve as important accountability tools, it’s important to prioritize creating a reading environment that mirrors real-world contexts. This means creating flexibility that allows students to develop habits and processes that fit their own reading preferences and needs.
Here are some suggestions for how to make reading real:
If you want to have accountability measures for independent reading, consider creating a menu of options so students can choose one that enhances their reading experience rather than detracts from it. Options might include reading logs, reading journals, writing book reviews (in a journal or in an online platform), or teacher-student reading conferences.
It’s important that we think expansively about what counts as reading to ensure that our definition creates space for students to explore their interests and curiosities. Whether it’s comic books, news articles, or fanfiction, when we validate students’ reading interests, we validate their identity as readers.
Students are more likely to find joy in reading when they see their identities, cultures, and lived experiences reflected in texts. Culturally relevant books not only affirm who students are, they expand their understanding of the world and help them recognize the value of their own stories.
As you curate a classroom library, be intentional to include texts that reflect the languages, histories, and identities represented among your students. Invite students to recommend books from their communities or share stories they connect with. When students feel seen in what they read, engagement increases, motivation grows, and reading becomes a meaningful part of their lives, not just an academic chore.
Just like we want to create an environment that connects students with the joy of reading, we want teachers to find joy in the process. Teachers are tasked with so much, and supporting students’ reading lives shouldn’t be viewed as one more thing; instead, it should be viewed as integral to how we conduct and structure our classrooms, it should be flexible, and it should be fun!
This blog contains a lot of ideas to support students’ reading practices. Start small. Pick one or two to prioritize, and then build from there when you have capacity. This helps make the integration of authentic classroom reading experiences sustainable.
At Inquiry By Design, we design our curriculum to be accessible, lean, and easy to implement. This means that teachers can shift their attention back to what matters: their students. This is true for reading, too. Our curriculum integrates independent reading into each unit by providing a curated list of books that align with the topics of each unit, along with connections to students’ independent reading woven throughout the curriculum.
If you’re interested in learning more about our curriculum and how we can work together to make your classroom and school a place where students’ reading lives thrive, reach out today!
References:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589004225015494
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563225000974
https://www.nagb.gov/news-and-events/news-releases/2025/nations-report-card-decline-in-reading-progress-in-math.html
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09500782.2024.2324948#abstract
https://ncte.org/statement/independent-reading/