Award-winning! Smart Work 2025: Developing Reading Motivation and Reading Comprehension
The Smart Work page presents everyday innovations and success stories developed by the employees of the City of Hämeenlinna.
Pupils’ literacy skills and desire to read are at an all-time low, which impacts all learning and participation. Strong literacy skills permeate all subjects and are of great importance in modern society, where all essential information is in written form. The speed of information absorption is a modern requirement. If literacy and reading comprehension are weak, there are major challenges in absorbing and correctly understanding information, which creates a risk to an individual’s legal protection and participation.
In Hämeenlinna, we have begun to consider ways to develop literacy and promote a passion for reading. For my part, as a special education teacher working across several schools, I started to put together a package to inspire reading and thereby develop literacy skills.
The list includes freely available tasks related to children’s and youth literature. I also personally have all the material on the list in physical form. The tasks range from easy-to-read material to sixth-grade literature. I have successfully used some of the tasks previously as a special education teacher for small groups, where the tasks helped even 3rd and 4th-grade pupils with weak reading skills get excited about reading together.
This list makes everyone’s work easier: you can see from the list which books already have ready-made tasks and answers. It also includes several tasks suitable for reading circles, as well as tips for handling any book within a reading circle format. Reading passports are also included, which can help a pupil get excited about reading together with family members.
The work is constantly evolving. I have been updating the list and collection since spring 2024. With this work, I wanted to show that we have ready-made material that promotes reading motivation and supports the development of literacy skills for the entire primary school age group. There are also tasks for works aimed at lower secondary school, but these have been excluded due to my specific job duties. I have shared information about the contents of these folders with all my fellow teachers at two schools.
Developer
Susanna Heikkilä, Special Education Teacher