4 Teachers Share Their Favorite Literacy Activities in Honor of National Reading Month

How do educators across the country celebrate National Reading Month in their classrooms? Building students’ literacy skills looks different for every learner, so we asked our awesome community of educators on Facebook what their favorite literacy activities are. Take a look at some of our favorite responses:

1. “We have Flashlight reading every Friday. We turn off the lights and crawl up with a buddy to read our Scholastic News using our flashlights.” – Nancy V.

via GIPHY

Building your own classroom library to supplement scheduled trips to your school’s library is a great way to encourage students to look for books that interest them; explore new topics; and grow into proficient, independent readers. Here are six tips to help you create a topnotch classroom library so that your bookworms can eat up some great reads!

2. “Sensory sand sight words, alphabet search with pool noodles in a pool!” – Amber S. 

Warner Bros

Sight words are a great way to help students build their literacy skills. Let’s explore three critical questions about sight words to understand their value in phonics instruction in this blog post.

3. “Flashcards and visual learning.” – Taylor L.

Viacom

Learning modalities (or learning styles) are the different ways that students learn and understand your instruction. Take a look at this blog post to learn more about the four most common learning styles and the ways that you can weave them into your lesson planning.

4. “[My] favorite literacy activity is [the] rotations I use with my students. They create board games after the[y] finish reading a book, act out/play charades with vocab words, and buddy reading! Seeing them enjoy reading and applying it in different ways to track comprehension is a happy teacher feeling!” – Kirsten A.

Sadrie

Literacy stations are an excellent way to build the reading, language, writing, and social skills of young learners and also to enable teachers to find time for more targeted student instruction. Get started with literacy stations in your classroom with our handy how-to guide.

Looking for more ways to encourage and boost your students’ literacy skills during National Reading Month and beyond? Check out our free, downloadable literacy lesson plans for grades K–8 to build your students’ love for reading!