How to Encourage Young People to Read Educational Books

(by guest blogger Pam Johnson) In today's world, it can be difficult to motivate young people to have a passion for reading. Yes, it is even harder when you want to get them to read educational books. How can you make this wish into a reality?

Ask Many Questions

One of the ways to inspire young people to read is to ask an array of questions. For example, let's say that you have a specific educational book that you want them to read. Ask them a lot of questions to which they can find answers in the book. You might send them on a hunt to find the answer to one specific question. After that, they may be inspired to read the book. Of course, you want to make the questions engaging and challenging to really get them involved in the process.

Some Tough Love

At first, you might need to resort to some old-fashioned methods to get them to read the book. Let's say that you are teaching a class of high school students, and you need them to read a particular educational book. Tell the students that a major test is going to be given on the book at the end of the term, and it will count for a large percentage of their grade. Knowing their grade is at stake can be enough motivation to read, and they might find that they actually love reading in the process.

Pick Their Own

While it can be a challenge to get kids interested in educational books, you can certainly take a softer approach too. Perhaps you are a parent who wants to get your child more interested in reading these types of books. Since you are not bound by state requirements or anything of that sort, take a few different educational books out of the library. Allow your child to select which one he or she would like to read. You are still requiring your child to read, but providing a choice makes it seem less daunting of a task.

Be Open-minded

You said that you want your children or students to read more "educational" books. Therefore, you need to be open-minded in terms of how you are defining "educational." For example,  while you might not be able to encourage them to read a novel on the politics of the French and Indian War, you may be able to get them to read a book that describes the history of baseball or the first black women who were involved in major scientific discoveries. You need to be realize that education comes in so many different forms, and they can find many different paths of knowledge to pursue.

At first, you might have thought that it would be simply impossible to get your children or students to read more educational books. Fortunately, after reviewing these tips, you see that it is more than possible. You just need to be a little bit creative in your methods, and you need to find subjects that interest the youngsters!

Author Pam Johnson is a teacher who is always encouraging children to read. She is also a contributing writer for the Master of Education Degree Guide.