Reading for a Purpose: Student's Motivation of Reading Will Soar

Reading for a purpose is an educational idea that has come of age. Reading just to read can cause the special education child to shut down or to resist. If they have a purpose to read the teacher can use the purpose as an evaluation tool and the student will feel that they are doing something productive. Whether it is reading for pleasure or reading from a school text, a purpose has to be stated to the student in order for them to set their goals and feel some sense of gratification of meeting that goal. Reading just to read makes reading more of a punishment than an essential life skill.

In the old days if you were done with your work for the period, the teacher would tell you to take out a library book to read. If you looked around the room, you would see that the most of the kids had books that had a lot of pictures in them or they were reading below their level. Today most schools have accelerated reading programs in their library. This program will mark certain books as AR books and the child can read the book to gain points to use at the book fair. The child will take a computer based test on the book and will gain points for as many questions that they got right.

This gives the child a goal to master. The self-rewarding system has challenged many readers to read more and to try different types of genres. This causes a reading culture in school that has everyone trying to reach as many points as possible before the upcoming book fair. The students can also give the library a list of books that were read over the summer and the accelerated reading programs will give the results to both the teacher and the student in print out form.

Reading for a purpose in the classroom setting is also important. When a teacher gives an assignment to read chapter seven in the history book, the text will appear dull and lifeless. When a assignment is to find data within the text, the students will actually have to look and read slower to find that data. The text will have meaning and the act of reading will have a purpose. This skill will help the student in higher grades or college to find information in texts and be able to translate it to their own words.