At EPS Learning, our Customer Success Partners work alongside educators with the goal of helping every student build essential reading skills. When students feel competent, confident, and engaged, they are poised to experience the joy of reading—and to carry that throughout their lives.
When educators integrate practices such as offering text choice, creating time for independent reading, and prompting discussion in the classroom, students’ motivation to read can grow. The following practices can help cultivate an appreciation for reading in all students, including striving readers.
1. Provide Access to a Variety of Relevant Texts
A love of reading begins with access. Students are more likely to be engaged when they can relate to the texts they read—and when they encounter interesting experiences and perspectives different from their own. Classrooms and digital libraries should include high-interest, culturally responsive materials across a range of levels and genres.
For striving readers, variety is especially powerful when it’s paired with thoughtful scaffolding. Digital platforms such as EPS Reading Assistant can match students with texts that align to their reading abilities while still respecting their interests. When students find texts that pique their curiosity, reading can stop feeling like an assignment and start feeling like a choice.
2. Protect Time for Independent Reading
Independent reading time is often one of the first things to disappear from a busy school day, but it can often be an effective way to strengthen both skill and motivation, particularly when a text is well matched to a student’s interests and ability level. Setting aside even 10-15 minutes a day for students to read books of their choice can help build fluency, stamina, and motivation.
3. Model Fluent, Joyful Reading
Students are more likely to enjoy reading when they see adults doing it with gusto. Regular read-alouds—at any grade level—give students a chance to hear fluent, expressive reading and to experience the rhythm and emotion of language.
Teachers can use read-alouds to spark curiosity (“What do you think will happen next?”), to model comprehension strategies by thinking aloud (“I’m noticing that when I read between the lines, I have a nervous feeling about what might happen.”), or to simply express enthusiasm about a piece of writing. When teachers demonstrate that reading is both meaningful and fun, students are more likely t o internalize the message than if they are told reading is important and enjoyable.
4. Celebrate Reading Together
Reading often grows well in community. When students share excitement about a book they’ve enjoyed, discuss characters, or set class reading goals, reading can feel like a shared experience rather than a solitary task. Classroom conversations and peer recommendations can make reading social and energizing.
School leaders and teachers can reinforce this sense of a reading community by creating opportunities to celebrate reading progress. Schools might host reading celebrations when goals are met, feature student book reviews or artwork on bulletin boards, or organize reading-buddy programs across grades. In the classroom, teachers can celebrate reading milestones such as finishing a novel, improving fluency, or meeting a personal reading goal with certificates, shout-outs, or handwritten notes sent home.
Students receiving literacy intervention have opportunities to experience a sense of accomplishment as their skills improve, but they may not always recognize how much progress they’re making. Many students who work in SPIRE , for example, enjoy tracking their fluency gains using graphs that make improvement visible and tangible. Students using EPS Reading Assistant can also set goals and track their own progress.
Building Skill and Will
Fostering a love of reading alongside skill development is a significant, important endeavor. Whether that means curating classroom libraries, scheduling independent reading, modeling enthusiastic reading, or celebrating growth, helping students build both skill and will for reading pays great dividends for all.
