One of my students is this really great writer, filmmaker and actor. Interesting thing is that he is in third grade. He writes these great little stories and was getting bored reading. I sat with him the first time and said, "Every time you get bored I want you to tell me." We had a blast. It would only be a few sentences before he would shout, "bored!"
I asked him, "why are you bored?"
"Not enough action," was his reply.
He was right. I had him write out how he could make the story better. It was amazing because he is amazing. We agreed that he really should not read any book unless it had action.
The next week he read a book in about 15 minutes. He stayed engaged, had fun and enjoyed the action. Then he revealed that he would really like to read "Harry Potter." This book was of course beyond his grade level.
We grabbed the book. I explained, "read and then write down any words you don't know." He fell in love with the first paragraph and only didn't know five of about a hundred words. I went over the words with him. He read the paragraph again and became excited.
We ended with the idea that maybe he could make reading a hobby. His teacher assigns him 30 minutes of reading per night. Making it a hobby rather than a task became interesting to him.
Sometimes it just takes sitting with a child and listening to them. They have great ideas.
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