It seems to be a year of extremes; either students won’t stop speaking to one another in class or they hardly say a word. My 2nd graders love to talk. they are a social bunch, they love their classmates, and they love sharing. We have a can’t miss morning meeting every day so they can share what’s on their mind, we have a lot of chat throughout the day. All of it productive, even if it is not the right time.
But what if your students don’t really engage in conversations with each other? Teaching middle school for many years, I would sometimes have classes where one/word answers where the norm, the fear of making a fool out of oneself so strong that even without our classroom, mouths stayed shut and opinions stayed hidden away.
How do we cultivate classroom connections for all of our students? How do we harness the awesome energy that comes from students who want to speak to each other but help it become more learning-focused?
Here are a few ideas for doing just that…
Guess the Source: Provide quotes or excerpts from different sources related to the lesson. Have students guess the source and discuss the context and the credibility.
Soundtrack to the Lesson: Ask students to choose a song that represents the essence of the lesson. Play snippets of the selected songs in class and have them discuss the connections they saw between the music and the material.
Philosophical Chairs: Set up a circle of chairs with sides for “agree,” “disagree,” and “undecided.” Pose a statement and have students physically move to express their stance.Have them turn to an elbow partner to express why they sat where they sat.
Time Capsule Discussion: Imagine creating a time capsule for the school year. Discuss what items or memories students would include and why.
Speed Networking: Students pair up and have a short, timed conversation (e.g., 2 minutes) about a non-academic topic, such as topics found here. Rotate and repeat with new partners.
Problem-Solving Circles: Present a real-world problem related to the lesson. Students discuss possible solutions in small groups and present their findings to the class.
Tech-Free Talk Time: Designate a short period each week for “Tech-Free Talk Time.” What do they already know about a topic? How long can they keep a conversation going without turning to a device to check a statement or learn more? What are the questions they wish they could have used tech to answer? Write them down.
Tech-Enhanced Show and Tell: Combine traditional show and tell with technology. Students bring in an object related to the lesson and create a brief digital presentation. This one is super fun for older students who often don’t get to do a “show and tell.” Another twist is to ask students to bring in their most precious item / or a picture of it – have them share with the class why this is the item they brought in.
Life Soundtrack:If their life had a soundtrack, what songs would be on it? Students share their top three songs and explain why each is significant.
Interactive Storytelling: Begin a story related to the lesson and pause at a crucial point. Each student or group continues the story.
I change my questions based on what we have seen, and what they may need to just sit with for a moment before we say goodbye. The students are ready to say goodbye, and I share a few words about the day, mostly the great and then something we are still working on as a class. Today, it was that we need to trust ourselves before asking an adult for help, and perhaps also notice a bit more when we are interrupting others.
And then I asked; did I have calm in my body when needed? Did I ask questions when I needed to? Did I help others? Did I notice how I impacted other people? Was I a good friend? Did I help make our school a great school to be at?
We are not in a circle when we do this, I don’t follow a script. It grew out of an organic need for reflection and also a peaceful way to say thank you for today. It takes a minute, two tops. And the questions? Well, I come up with them every day, always making sure there is at least one that every kid will be able to say yes to it.
It is a small thing. It seems a lot of impactful changes are. However, when I shared the practice on Bluesky (follow me here) many said it resonated with them. That it offers kids a way to consider their actions and themselves as a part of the whole. That this practice means we get to end in a few minutes of calm, where we reconnect with the whole day, without being lectured, without belittlement, but just a simple invitation for honest reflection and contemplation of who we are, and who we want to be.
Perhaps this is something you could use as well?
What might these questions be? Here are a few that you can use as you develop your own:
Was I able to find peace in my body?
Was I a good friend to others?
Was I able to not create conflict or solve it if it happened?
Did I participate in the learning today?
Did I listen when others spoke?
Did I ask questions when I needed?
Did I take any good chances today?
Did I help make our school a good school to attend?
Did I help make our class a great class to attend?
If Pernille saw my homeadults, would she be able to share I had a great day?
Did I show kindness to someone today?
Did I try my best, even when it was hard?
Did I include others or make them feel welcome?
Did I keep my promises?
Did I share something with someone?
Did I find something to be proud of?
Did I use my time well?
Did I notice someone who needed help and offer it?
Did I take care of the classroom or school environment?
Did I bring good energy to our class today?
Did I learn something new about myself or someone else?
Did I stay curious and open to ideas?
Did I make today better for myself and others?
I usually pick 5-7 depending on the day and I remind the students that they don’t have to share their answers. That this is just for them. At the end, I say the same thing: “And if your answer was no to any of these, then remember that tomorrow is a new day.” The students say it with me, not because I asked them to, but because this is how we end the day. And then we say goodbye.
On Friday’s we say “And if your answer was no to any of these, then remember that Monday starts a new week.” But in Danish, of course.
The students remind me if I am about to forget doing this with them. They take pride both in the days where they can say yes to everything, but also in the days where they reflect and realize that tomorrow is a new day and that they are not defined by their goofy choices. It helps me center the day too, because even in the wackiest of days – and trust me, we have had some that have made me cry due to fights, and awful behavior – there are kids doing good things. We, as a community, are doing good things.
So often community is built in the small moments, in the quiet reflection, so I thought I would offer this up to boost your own practice.
I think we are all really good at setting goals. But goals that we actually attain? Those are harder. So when I think of the reading goal work I do and have done with students, there is a small tweak that has made a big difference: including the why. And not in teacher lingo, but in the everyday kid language that shows us this is something they have truly reflected on.
Why have they chosen what they chose? What should the end result be?
Does it even align with who they are and what they have the capacity for right now?
This small tweak can lead to a deeper understanding of how they want to grow overall and move goals from being checklist items to meaningful pursuits. It can also show us which kids are just setting goals to please the adults or get it off their to-do. There is a lot of parroting that happens in schools, kids know what we teachers want to hear and so often when it comes to setting learning goals, kids tell us what we want to hear. Asking them to pause and add on an answer to “in order to” gives us a chance to open up for much broader conversations, and also continue our focus on developing readers and not “just” reading skills.
I have shared my reading survey before, but here is my 6 week survey that I use every 6 weeks to check in with students. This is where they set new goals and it has been updated with this addition.
Another post first shared on Patreon, but one that is oh so relevant as we continue to attempt to build meaningful reading relationships.
I came across a fascinating article that discussed the three pillars of self-compassion and how actively developing it can help us alleviate anxiety and depression. Immediately, my mind jumped to reading identity and overall school affinity for students. How does self-compassion and seeing your own worth tie in with how we develop and what we are willing to try?
So I have a few ideas for how we can take this work and bring it into our classrooms as a part of what we already do. In my experience, some kids who hate reading have this reaction because of how reading makes them feel; worthless, and so when we focus on developing self-compassion, they can sometimes shift their mindsets into one of awe rather than disappointment.
Reading is an incredibly complex brain capability. It is not something that just happens, but something we have to train our brain to do, thus the need for specific reading skills teaching, as well as positive reading experiences. When kids don’t develop as easily as they see others do, they often turn that inward, seeing themselves as less-than, rather than recognizing that many components need to be in place to develop as a reader and that we inherently develop at different speeds. And we can try to speak this out of existence, but we all know that ultimately the deeper realization needs to come from the child themselves.
Adding these ideas into the reading conferring that hopefully is happening provides us with an opportunity to dig deeper into how kids view themselves as readers, and the next steps they can take in their journey. So it is not that it is one more thing to do, but rather a new lens and line of questioning we can explore with those kiddos who despite all our attempts still hate reading.
I use a lot of surveys with kids in order to see how they view themselves as readers. My beginning of the year one – which can be used any time – can be accessed here but sometimes a quick survey like this one can also be a great way to check in and deepen conversations.
I would love to know your thoughts on this. Do we even have time for this? How do we make the time? What are the conversations we can have with kids that help them take over the ownership of their reading development?
I have been thinking, writing, speaking about reading identity and building joyful reading opportunities in school for more than a decade. Ideas still come, but at times, they slow down. After all, there are mnay tried and true ideas that still work, even as they get re-shared throughout the years. We finetune, we adapt, we consider, we reflect, and we put things into practice to see if this little tweak, this little idea is THE idea for helping a child build their reading culture.
We all know so many of the components of a reading environment that works a for a lot of kids. Independent reading time, book choice (As my niece said today, “I only like to read books I decide myself”), embracing diverse preferences not just in reading material but also in how we read, who we read with and how we work with reading. We allow and encourage book abandonment, and we spend precious minutes recommending books to speak books with our students. We lead the way as a committed adult reader who wants to showcase all the paths into reading and why it matters.
Bit it doesn’t always work. Even this, is sometimes not enough. And I get asked a lot; then what. But how can we take it further? Because an adult-centered reading community is an artificial one at length for students. It has an expiration date that lines up with when the adult says goodbye.
This is why some of our time has to be focused on that shift in who is at the center of the reading culture. How can we shift from being the sole source of reading knowledge to cultivating a shared knowledge base? How do we establish and grow a casual reading community that goes beyond just the teacher-student interactions and start to draw in each other as fellow readers?
Like I said, I have shared many ideas throughout the years – in my book, Passionate Readers, this community, and on social media. But here are a few more to get those readers talking, sharing, and seeing each other as the valuable resources that they are.
I have linked to the resources I have created as well.
Choose my Bookfor Me
Have each child fill in a reading desire sheet: length, genre, format, favorite previous reads etc – see sheet for questions and to make your own.
Then have students identify four people they would like to find a book for – 2 friends and 2 not-yet-friends. Assign two students to each child, ensuring everyone has two individuals to find a book for.
Share the reading desire sheet and let them loose, pulling books they think these people may like.
Pile them up and have them add them to their to-be-read list.
Grab some shoe boxes or other smaller boxes and group 4-5 students together.
Let them loose in your book stacks – collaborate with your librarian if you don’t have a classroom library – and as a group, have them fill each box with recommendations of books they have loved.
Swap boxes with other groups, give a short rundown of titles selected if you want, and have kids write down book recommendations on their to-be-read lists.
1 Minute Book Talk
At the end of independent reading once a week, have students stop and do a 1 minute or less book talk to their table group (or group them together).
Have them share what they are reading, why they chose it, and one other question from this list or ones they make up themselves.
Share the most shocking or surprising moment you’ve encountered in your book so far.
What keeps you hooked and motivated to continue reading this book?
On a scale of 1 to 5, how would you rank this book in terms of enjoyment?
Who do you think would enjoy reading this book?
If you could ask the author one question about the book, what would it be?
Share a favorite quote or passage from the book that resonated with you.
Has this book made you see something in a different way? How has it changed your perspective?
Make a TikTok dance or gesture that represents the overall mood or theme of the book.
Imagine if this book were turned into a movie. Who would you cast as the main characters?
Share your favorite character from the book and explain why they’re memorable to you.
If you could recommend this book to anyone (real or fictional), who would it be and why?
Share an interesting fact or trivia related to the author or the book’s setting.
What emotions has this book made you feel?
Show us your reading spot or favorite place to dive into this book.
If you could live in the world of this book for a day, what would you do or explore?
Share a book-related tip or hack that has enhanced your reading experience.
In three words, describe the overall vibe or atmosphere of the book.
Think Like a Marketer
Have students find a book they would like to advertise. Can be one they have read or not.
The goal is now to create an advertising campaign for this to entice as many readers as possible. What should the tagline be? How should the book be photographed? Think like a marketer – how would the book be placed, what props would be present, what would the angle be?
Have students create posters using Canva with their images and taglines and share them around the school as a way to entice further readers. You can even run a campaign and see how many kids end up borrowing the book.
Giving students an opportunity to be the ones that speak books more than the adults is a way to shift ownership. It becomes commonplace when we give it value, time, and space to be developed.
So what are ideas that you like to use? How have you shifted the ownership of the discovery of books into the hands of your students?
Another post from my Patreon that I thought might be useful to others. After all, we are all faced with many who have deselected reading as something they spend time on, either by choice or by circumstance. And those kids, or adults, have more than likely had a lot of well-meaning adults try to help them reconnect with reading. But have we really dug into why? And not just in a one question on a survey kind of way. So if you are looking for some inspiration, perhaps these thoughts can help.
My students are supposed to read 20 or so minutes a day. Maybe yours are too.
Most of them don’t.
They go to afterschool care, play video games, play with friends—do all the things kids tend to do when they have full and busy lives. Many also don’t seem too bothered by their lack of outside reading.
Reading is, after all, just something you do in school for school.
It’s remarkable, even at the 2nd-grade level, how vast the difference is between the kids who read regularly and those who don’t. Those who read for discovery outside of class grow by leaps and bounds in class. They bring in words, ideas, connections that weren’t part of a lesson plan but are now shaping their learning anyway. It shows the benefits of having a literate life and what can happen when someone is not given that same opportunity.
Those who haven’t found a lot of reading joy yet—or whose parents don’t help them make time for reading (or force them to in some instances)—are growing too. But it’s different. More halting. There’s more confusion, more gaps to fill, more knowledge to simply encounter as they grow their brains.
So as always, I am curious.
Why not?
Why is it that despite their access to books, their reading time at school, their exposure to true reading role models, and all of the good things that come with that, they still don’t read?
Is it choice? Is it life circumstances?
So this is the core of today’s discussion: Why don’t you read?
Not just a question to be answered in five minutes and moved on from. But a conversation, something to be worked with, to be shared, to be understood. What are the actual barriers that stop you—not just from reading, but from enjoying it?
And if reading isn’t a struggle for you, if you already carve out time for books, then what’s your question for reflection?
Every student has paper or their notebook to reflect in.
🔽 Do you read outside of school? ➡️ YES! → What has helped you build that habit? What do you wish more people knew about reading? What’s a book you wish someone would pick up? ➡️ No… not really. → Let’s figure out why.
Barrier: I Don’t Have Time.
➡️ Is that really true? 🔹 Do you scroll on your phone? 🔹 Do you rewatch the same YouTube videos? 🔹 Do you lie in bed awake, waiting to fall asleep? 🔹 Do you sit in the car, on the bus, waiting for things to start?
➡️ If so… ✅ Try a 5-minute read—set a timer and stop when it dings. ✅ Audiobooks count. Can you listen while doing something else? ✅ Carry a book with you and grab small moments while waiting. ✅ Swap one round of social media, one video, one game level for a page.
➡️ If not… ✅ Reading doesn’t have to be daily—what if you just picked one time per week?
Barrier: I Don’t Have a Good Book.
➡️ What’s the last thing you liked? 🔹 A movie? 🔹 A game? 🔹 A TV show? 🔹 A meme?
➡️ Now match it. ✅ Like action? Try graphic novels or fast-paced adventure books. ✅ Like funny things? Try books that make people laugh (even if it’s just ridiculous facts). ✅ Like facts? Nonfiction books exist about EVERYTHING. Even weird stuff. Especially weird stuff. ✅ Hate long books? Short stories, poetry, or “choose your own adventure” books count.
➡️ Still not sure? ✅ Let someone else pick for you—friends, a teacher, even a random shelf grab. Worst case? You don’t like it and try something else.
Barrier: My Brain Can’t Settle Down to Read.
➡️ What’s going on in your head right before you try to read? 🔹 Just came off screen time? 🔹 Feeling stressed or distracted? 🔹 Can’t sit still?
➡️ Try helping your brain shift gears: ✅ Move first—walk, stretch, or shake it out. ✅ Do something calming before reading (drawing, deep breaths, fidgeting). ✅ Start tiny: Read for 2 minutes only. Then decide if you want to keep going.
Barrier: My Space Isn’t Helping Me Focus.
➡️ What is your reading space actually telling your brain? 🔹 “Time to relax”? 🔹 “Time to scroll”? 🔹 “Snack time”? 🔹 “Get up and do something”?
➡️ Change the signal: ✅ Play soft music or use headphones. ✅ Light a candle or turn on a lamp you only use for reading. ✅ Wrap yourself in a blanket or sit somewhere totally new—even under a table!
Barrier: There’s Too Much Emotional Noise.
➡️ What happened right before you tried to read? 🔹 A fight? 🔹 Rushing from one thing to another? 🔹 Feeling overwhelmed?
➡️ Make space for calm first: ✅ Pick a spot that feels safe and yours. ✅ Pause and take 3 deep breaths or journal for 1 minute. ✅ Let yourself off the hook—it’s okay to reset and try again later.
Barrier: I Feel Weird or Judged When I’m Reading.
➡️ What’s making you hide your reading? 🔹 Afraid of being judged for what you like? 🔹 Embarrassed to be seen reading at all?
➡️ Make reading yours again: ✅ Read somewhere private or where no one bothers you. ✅ Own what you like—comics, sports facts, scary stories, whatever. ✅ Know this: Many who love reading started by maybe liking something others didn’t expect.
Barrier: It’s Boring.
➡️ Have you ever read something you liked? ✅ Yes → What was it? Why did you like it? What’s similar to that? ✅ No → Are you sure? Not even a weird fact? A joke book? A book that made you feel something?
➡️ Options to make it better: ✅ Try a different format—graphic novels, audiobooks, books with amazing visuals. ✅ Try stopping—if you hate a book, pick another. Life’s too short for bad books. ✅ Try making it social—buddy read, listen to a book with someone, or join a book-related challenge. ✅ Try a weird book. (Weird books are never boring.)
Barrier: It’s Too Hard.
➡️ What’s the hardest part? 🔹 The words? 🔹 The length? 🔹 The focus?
➡️ Solutions: ✅ Words are tricky? Graphic novels, page turners, novels in verse, or audiobooks might help. (You can get free access to audiobooks through the library!) ✅ Books feel too long? Try short stories or poetry. ✅ Hard to focus? Set a timer, read in small bursts, or listen to the book instead. ✅ Read with someone else. A friend, sibling, teacher, or even your pet.
Barrier: I Just Don’t Feel Like It.
➡️ Why? 🔹 Because it feels like work? 🔹 Because you think you “should” but don’t actually care? 🔹 Because you don’t see the point?
➡️ Reframing it: ✅ Reading doesn’t have to be a big commitment. What if it was just one page, one laugh, one cool fact? ✅ You don’t have to feel like a “reader” to enjoy a good story—what’s something you love or something you want to know more about? There’s a book about it. ✅ What if reading wasn’t about school, but about escaping, understanding, or just killing time in a way that actually sticks with you? ✅ No rules. No pressure. Just curiosity—what’s the last thing that made you go, “Huh, that’s interesting”? There’s probably a book for that. ✅ Forget “should.” What if you just picked up a book with no expectation to finish? Just to see.
For Those Who Already Read
➡️ Your questions: ✅ What has helped you build a reading habit? ✅ Have you ever had a reading slump? How did you get out of it? ✅ What book do you think would change someone’s mind about reading? ✅ How can you help others who don’t love reading yet?
Wrap it up: Pair & Share or Small Group Discussion
Students discuss their barriers and potential solutions in small groups.
Those who already read regularly can act as mentors—sharing strategies that have helped them make time for reading or find books they love.
Closing Reflection
One final written reflection or class discussion:
What is one idea from today that you want to try?
What might that look like?
Who is your accountability partner?
Why This Approach?
It acknowledges real barriers instead of just saying “read more.”
It gives choice and control back to students.
It makes room for both struggling and committed readers to reflect meaningfully.
It creates a community of readers where those who love books can help those who don’t—without making it feel like a lecture.
Pernille Ripp 