Hi,

I tutor this kid in reading. He is in Gr. 5 and is reading at a Gr. 2 level. I can't seem to get him motivated at all. If let him choose a book, he just chooses an extremely easy book and doesn't bother to challenge himself. The book selection at the library is also quite limited. And when he reads, he can't sit still and is easily distracted. He just doesn't want to be there and would rather be playing outside or watching TV. Basically, he's not trying at all. What should I do?

I don't have a lot of experience dealing with kids so any help is appreciated.

- J.K.

You need to find the right reward. Figuring out what different people find as a motivating reward can be very difficult. Depending on who has hired you as a tutor, the rewards that you can give might be limited as well. Find out his interests, hobbies and heroes. Work them into the things for him to read. If you have some flexibility in your reward, I would try the following:

Write a relatively short, and semi-challenging passage for him to read. Of course it should be about his interests and end on a cliffhanger. Tell him that if he reads it, he is free to spend the rest of the time playing outside, and then after he completes the task, let him play outside, but refuse to answer any questions about that he may have about the cliffhanger. Be coy and tell him he will have to wait till the next tutoring session to find out.

Don't worry if he doesn't bite the first time you try this. It may take you a couple of tries to find a story that he is interested in. Once you get him really hooked, you can take breaks in writing the story (It doesn't have to be well written - just interesting to him), and switch to books on the subject in the library, or magazine articles, or whatever for a lesson and then come back to the story.

This does require quite a bit of prep work for you, but I find that it works well. I use the time that the child is out playing to prep for the next tutorial session. It is important to remember that the goal is not the number of hours that he sits with you and reads, but how exciting he finds reading. If he finds it sufficiently rewarding, he will start reading on his own.

Good luck.

Are these "easy books" at a Gr. 2 level? Can he handle anything more difficult? If so, how do you know?

The way I tutored kids in reading was having them write. They wrote their own books (after I cut and stapled sheets of printer paper together into a book form). First, we together came up with a story, and I printed it on one sheet of paper. It was short and slightly boring the first time. Then I printed the story words on each page, and the child and I did the artwork.

You and your student could create an alphabet book, one page per letter, such as A is for apostrophe, B is for bomb, C is for China, etc. The two of you draw a picture for each and talk about each. (This could flow into a library or encyclopedia or Internet search.)

Or write down a beginning sentence beforehand and ask him to write a story based on that sentence, or do a round-robin/back-and-forth with him - you first, he second, you third, he fourth, etc. Let him read out loud the finished story. Always keep a running commentary going as you work with him.

His writing (word choices) and printing and drawing and reading and creating will give you a good idea of where he is. I found that 5th grade boys are interested in power and smashing and even killing, so direct him carefully if he is this way.

As for choosing books to read, don't give him the whole library, but choose maybe five books that he can choose two books from to read out loud with you -- trade off reading pages or paragraphs or even just sentences.

I'd say reward him somehow, but the older I get and the more experience I have, I've found that the creation and writing and reading can be their own reward.

I know that he reads at a lower level than he's supposed to because that's what his mother told me.

Thank you for your answers. I will try to implement a few of these ideas next time.

I'm curious how his mother came to that conclusion. Was he tested at school? Has he tried anything more challenging? I wonder if maybe he's getting bored because the books are too easy?

My second grader was threatened with failing because he was not reading. The problem was that his interest was in far more challenging books than he could actually read. He liked to have people read too him, but couldn't read complicated sentences fast enough to satisfy himself. The simple books at school bored him and he wasn't motivated to read those.

A tutor got him over the hump through sheer push--working with him intensively for an hour a week. She gave him lots of German desserts--though I don't know if that was a factor! After 2-3 months, he was walking down the sidewalk with his nose in a book. And last year he took the PSAT and scored 97%ile on reading comprehension. She would have him read passages and he had to be able to read them in a certain amount of time out loud to Pass, then move onto another. It was, frankly, pure drill. But it worked. One thing though, the paragraphs were relatively interesting, not boring like the books at his school.

I think your student sounds similar in that what he is reading is boring him. However, he's an older kid, so there's probably a much greater difference between what he can read and what would interest him. ALSO, he's probably convinced by now that trying to learn to read is beyond him. This is a harder challenge.

Most of the books I saw that were written for early readers were incredibly boring and sometimes hard to understand because they made the sentences TOO short. You couldn't tell what the connections between ideas were. One series of books my son really liked --right AFTER he learned to read--were the books by Avi--Ragweed, Poppy, Poppy and Rye, etc.

It's too bad the parents waited so long on this. Good luck!