Building a reading culture

As classrooms grow more diverse and global, Makoda Gascon explores how teachers can build a love of reading that is engaging, inclusive, and accessible to all students.

Photograph: Pexels: Mikhail Nilov

Text: Makoda Gascon

The importance of reading transcends grade levels, proficiency, and culture, as it opens the world and makes it more interconnected and knowledgeable. How do you bring that innate sense of wonder about the world that reading can bring to the students within a classroom?

Simple beginnings

When you are trying to involve students in an international school in reading, the process can be challenging, as not all students may have the same reading background. Depending on the year they are in and when they arrived in the current country, their reading level and interest can vary significantly. Even if all your students have stayed within the same school or area, there is no guarantee that their level of proficiency will match their level of interest. Because of this, it is so important to start small and keep it simple to encourage your students to engage with reading without making it feel like a chore.

Picture walking

For picture walks, this process involves having students look through a book, focusing solely on the pictures. This is ideal for early childhood and elementary-level students, but can also be done at older ages through graphic novels, manga, or other illustrated pieces. With picture walks, the purpose is to look at the illustrated pictures and use them solely to either guess the story or enhance it after it has already been read. In many books for younger children, illustrations can be very literal in their portrayal of the story, providing a positive confirmation of the events. This can help young readers or students learning a new language better correlate the information they are given.

Be diverse in genre

Sticking to one specific genre of book can be detrimental to any class, especially an international one. Making students aware that many genres can be found in books can make it clearer that their interests can be found there as well. Asking students at the start of the school year or when they arrive in class what their hobbies and interests are can help them find books that may later catch their attention. To further this point, bringing students to a library can give them freer rein to choose books that not only interest them genre-wise, but also visually.

Different culturally insignificant books

One way to foster a strong reading culture in the school is to have each international student bring a book to share with the rest of the class. This could include books that a student grew up reading, famous books from that culture, or even examples that the student wanted to read but never did. If the chosen book is not in a language the rest of the class understands, finding translated, modified, or summarised versions may allow the book to still be enjoyed by the entire class. By doing so, it allows their culture to be seen for what it is and experienced through literature.

Bring up your classics.

If you’re a teacher, it can also be beneficial to mention the books that were important to you when you were in school and growing up. No matter the culture, having each student realise that the process of reading is universal through the eyes of their teacher’s past can foster connections between a teacher and a student. When we are the grown-ups in their classroom time, it can be hard to realise that each teacher was once a child, with books that interested them.

No books? No problem!

Thankfully, reading is not limited to sitting down and opening a book; literacy is fluid and ever-changing across multiple mediums. If students aren't at an age to want to read a book, or perhaps aren’t interested, try showcasing reading in different lights. Having your students listen to music, watch a movie, listen to a podcast, or play a video game with subtitles can be passive, but engaging them in active reading can help them better put words into a tangible context.

Reading is for everyone

No matter how old you are or how much you think you read, even reading this blog engages that literacy muscle and allows you to continue your passion for reading in a way that suits your lifestyle and interests.