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A trio of educators shares their tech tools and tips to capture and keeps kids’ attention--here's how they boost student engagement

Each year Renaissance analyzes millions of student reading records to create the largest study of student reading habits in the world, What Kids Are Reading. Among the findings that stood out to us this year were the fact that students, particularly in later grades, do not spend enough time reading and do not read complex enough texts to improve their proficiency. To help students stretch those reading muscles, we suggest scheduling more independent reading time and making it easier for students to find books they enjoy.

What Kids Are Reading includes lists of the most popular books by grade, and one thing we see in the upper grades is that the most-read books tend to be part of the canon students are commonly assigned in class. It appears that many students are reading what they’re assigned and little else. When I was a high school teacher, our lists would not have looked like that because we began each class of our block schedule with 15–20 minutes of independent reading. Schedule some time each day for your students to practice the most fundamental academic skill there is, and soon they’ll be reading books they’re interested in and not just those you’ve assigned.

It’s not entirely clear why students aren’t reading more, but we do know that the older students get, the more likely they are to say they have trouble finding books they like. Make it easier on them! Lower the barriers to access by making digital books available to them so they don’t have to get a pass, go down to the library, make their way through the stacks, engage with the online circulation system, find the book, check it out, and go back to class. It also helps to keep a class bookshelf, either digitally or in hard copy, where students can share books they’ve enjoyed with one another.

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