12 Reasons Students Don’t Read & What You Can Do About It – TeachThought

November 14, 2025 | Up to date November 13, 2025

12 Frequent Causes College students Don’t Learn & What You Can Do About It

by Terry Heick

Why don’t college students learn extra?

Digital distractions? No books at residence? An excessive amount of testing? Kim Kardashian? It depends upon the coed. It depends upon illiteracy vs aliteracy. It depends upon the way you outline studying (does studying long-winded character dialogues in Sq. Enix video games rely?) So under, I’ve gathered a number of the commonest causes college students don’t learn and supplied some methods you’ll be able to start to handle that concern.

12 Frequent Causes College students Don’t Learn & What You Can Do About It

1. They haven’t discovered the precise e book or kind of e book.

How do you’re feeling when your principal drops a e book in your lap–one thing well-intentioned however not even a bit naturally attention-grabbing to you? Do you hate to learn since you don’t wish to learn it?

Attainable options: I inform my college students that after I stroll right into a bookstore of 10,000 books, 9200 of them don’t enchantment to me. The upside? Which means there are 800 books I’m dying to learn. Nobody hates to learn. A few of us are simply pickier readers than others. We’ve bought a group of books for students who think they don’t like reading, too.

See additionally What I Tell Students Who Think They Don’t Like To Read

2. They want common studying methods they’ll flip to every so often.

Attainable options: See here.

Attainable options: ‘Market’ studying to them. Take footage of them studying. Begin a ‘Caught Studying’ class instagram feed or #caughtreading hashtag (ship it to me and I’ll tweet it). Deal with it with the identical creativity and fervour that advertising businesses efficiently market billion-dollar corporations.

3. They want particular studying methods they’ll self-select from based mostly on context.

Attainable options: Determine their strengths and areas for progress as a reader, assist them self-assess in the identical means, then work along with them and their dad and mom to create a set of 4-6 studying methods from the record above (or different) for them to make use of flexibly relying on what they’re studying.

4. Studying might be intimidating.

Studying is enjoyable–till it isn’t. Do I perceive it? What shall be on the take a look at? Am I at grade stage? Above? Beneath? What if I’ve to learn out loud?

Attainable options: Don’t make them learn out loud until what you’re eager to assess is oral fluency! Don’t put them on the spot. Don’t ask comprehension questions out loud. Don’t all the time insist that they ‘learn on grade stage’ (Really feel like studying Shakespeare after a protracted day, or would you relatively go residence and plop on the sofa and watch ‘Bar Rescue’?)

5. The studying area or ‘vibe’ isn’t proper.

Too noisy. Too quiet. Too many distractions. Too heat, too chilly–all of us have circumstances we wish to learn in. I can’t learn if it’s not fully quiet–anybody speaking and I’m accomplished.

Attainable options: Permit college students to make use of white noise apps. Put white noise on within the classroom (they’ll get used to it). Create studying areas in your classroom. Ask your librarian/media specialist if they’ve any concepts. Flip the lights down. Purchase bean baggage–even for highschool college students!

6. They want a purpose to learn.

And also you assigning it isn’t sufficient.

Attainable options: Make studying social. The method, the reflections, and the outcomes. Assist them see the worth of each the method of studying (essential considering), and the outcomes of studying (information). Assist them see studying as a part of the connection between the life they’ve and the life they wish to have.

7. They’ve an excessive amount of else to do.

It’s exhausting to learn if in case you have one million issues to do. Who desires to “get pleasure from a superb e book” whenever you’ve bought 20 pages of homework to do?

Attainable options: Assist them create a personalised studying schedule that works for them based mostly on their life.

8. It’s not a behavior.

Studying is a muscle. The extra they learn, the extra they’ll wish to learn.

Attainable options: They want an at-home library of ‘stuff’ they wish to learn. Or the Epic reading app.

9. They’ve issues with phonemic consciousness.

In the event that they wrestle with phonemic consciousness, studying goes to be like climbing a mountain.

Attainable options: Apps can’t resolve each literacy downside, however they’re nice for observe. Listed below are some elementary reading apps that may assist. And a few apps for struggling readers.

10. They’ve a restricted sight phrase vocabulary.

Restricted sight phrase vocabulary means sluggish studying velocity, which reduces comprehension and makes studying not enjoyable.

Attainable options: Use Knowji. Have enjoyable with Frayer Fashions. Play Vocab video games. However greater than anything, assist them construct a way of momentum as readers. Encountering phrases in context is healthier than on an index card for long-term retention.

11. They wrestle with their very own id as a ‘reader.’

These college students see studying as one thing that you simply do in school, relatively than a possibility to make which means, be entertained, be uncovered to new concepts, make associates, and many others. Somebody that engineers is named an engineer. Somebody that writes is a author. Somebody that reads? That’s referred to as a pupil.

12. They should know all the unimaginable issues about studying–matters, information, genres, authors, and many others.

Attainable Options: So present them.

12 Frequent Causes College students Don’t Learn & What You Can Do About It; picture attribution flickr consumer eugenekim