Children’s Intrinsic Motivation to Read and Why It’s So Important

Learning to read is a complex journey for any child to navigate. Some children come across a few more stumbling blocks in comparison to others, which can impact how they perceive themselves. Some children will find it harder to recognise themselves as readers, and so their intrinsic motivation to read diminishes.

The will to read must come before the skill. Nurturing a love of books and reading is the foundational element to learning to read – or more importantly, reading volitionally.

Seeing themselves as readers supports children’s intrinsic motivation to read

Within any classroom setting, children will notice specific subtleties between children who are good at reading and those that are still developing the foundational elements.  Every child’s reading journey is important, unique and worthy of being celebrated, regardless of progress or age-related expectations. Creating a community of readers is essential when enabling every child to feel successful when they are engaging with texts – fluency routines and strategies are a great enabler when creating a community and culture of shared reading. This way, no child feels left behind or forgotten, and every child can see themselves as a reader. I talk about this further on the Tapestry podcast.

Creating social reading environments

When developing a community of readers, you are also nurturing a community of thinkers – the aim being that through rich engagement with texts, dialogic talk sparks an inter-thinking community. Books are the gateway to understand the human experience and the world around them. Showing that you value pupil voice in your classroom setting is essential to develop intrinsic motivation to read, and to read further and deeper. Pupil voice and developing a sense of belonging within a reading community can be fostered in many ways, such as:

• Write what they like about a book on post it notes and display these on the wall.
• Recommend a book they like to someone else in the class.
• Read the same book and share their thoughts about what they liked, disliked, etc.

How educators reading aloud supports children’s intrinsic motivation to read

Maslow’s hierarchy is a powerful visual that I believe is so relevant to the importance of reading aloud to children. From my experience, gathering the children together, listening to the same story and enabling the children to respond to the shared experience of the same book is magical. It nurtures a sense of belonging, safety and warmth. ‘Book Votes’ and ‘Reader Recommendations’ add another layer of depth, because pupil voice is being used to facilitate deeper shared reading experiences – and shared knowledge of texts.

Reading aloud enables a sense of inclusion to take root, and feeling a sense of belonging strengthens children’s intrinsic motivation to read. The Teachers as Readers[1] study found that the sense of having a ‘reading community’ can be supported when a school community highlights teachers who talk about their own reading lives.

However, we cannot assume that all teachers will be confident when reading aloud; some teachers who are less confident about reading aloud to their class could be supported in some of the following ways:

• Recommend books you’ve personally found work well when read aloud.
• Encourage teachers to think beyond the typical book. I’ve witnessed a brilliant lesson where a teacher used their passion for maps as the starting point for reading to their class.
• Ensure teachers have agency and time to share books and texts they enjoy.

Reader Volition starts with Reader’s Choice

Enabling the children the freedom to choose what they would like to read is empowering – agency is a powerful way to ensure volitional reading behaviours are nurtured.

The World Book Day 2025 theme was ‘read your way’ – this echoes the premise of the Rights of a Reader by Daniel Pennac – Microsoft Word – HO 11 Rights of the reader.doc – it highlights that there is not a correct way of reading, and so demonstrates there is not a correct way when learning to read – the journey is unique to each and every child.

To hear more about Kiran’s approaches to reading, you can listen to Kiran on the Tapestry podcast

[1] Cremin, T. Mottram, S. Collins R and Safford K. 2014 Teachers as Readers: Building Communities of Readers. 

Try Tapestry today – sign up for a free trial