In today’s world, many children have lost their enthusiasm for reading, which has become a concern for many parents. The good news is that there are dynamic strategies to help change this behavior.
In the past, learning to read was seen primarily as an academic process and rarely considered a form of entertainment. Although this perception still exists today, recent developments have introduced games that yield impressive results.
Reading is undoubtedly a fundamental skill for human communication, fostering imagination, creativity, and cognitive abilities. If reading was once a popular activity, when did it stop being enjoyable? Why is it now so challenging for children and young people to enjoy reading as much as they do video games?
The blame often falls on television, social media, or excessive phone use. However, the real issue lies with rigid teaching methods, where outdated reading strategies led children to lose interest in books.
Historically, reading was often associated with negative experiences—using it as a punishment, portraying it as a serious task, or enforcing only classic literature—resulted in generations losing interest in reading.
Fortunately, times have changed. Today, there is a genuine interest in teaching children to enjoy reading through engaging and playful methods. Many schools have revived the joy of reading by adopting activities that make reading more enjoyable. The concept is simple: play to read and read to play. These two dynamic approaches link the act of playing with cognitive learning.
Here are some fun ways to make reading an enjoyable activity:
1. Word and Image Bingo
- Objective: Familiarize children with words and their meanings through visual associations.
- How to Play: Create bingo cards with a list of 15 words, arranged in a 3×5 grid. One person shows images related to these words without saying the words themselves. Children match the images with the words on their bingo cards.
2. Watch Out for Your Word!
- Objective: Enhance word recognition and reading fluency.
- How to Play: Choose a short story (about 10 minutes) and create a list of words from the text. Each participant gets one word from the list. As the story is read aloud, children listen for their assigned words. When a child hears their word, they take over the reading until the next word is called.
Practicing reading as a form of entertainment is the best way to combat factors that discourage students from picking up a book. It’s essential to break the notion that reading is merely a school activity, an obligation, or a punishment.
With the aid of digital resources, there are numerous tools and activities available to make reading exciting. These innovations help challenge the outdated stereotype that books and reading are tedious and boring.
