Teachers and parents always ask me how to get their children to want to read when television, video games, and the internet are ready and waiting everywhere.  There is no single easy answer.  Here are a five ideas that can help connect kids to reading. 

1. Discuss books and stories with children.  Whenever a student starts to tell me about a television show, movie, or video game, I find a way to connect the conversation to a book.  Sometimes this is easy because so many television shows, movies, and video games are based on books.  At other times, it is a skillful redirection.  Every once in a while, I will even offer a critique of the media as lacking something compared to a book I am reading.  
   
2. Remind students that before the video version can be made, the story/script must be written.  I tell my students over and over that the best entertainment begins with a writer who is very good at telling a story.  The writer has to imagine all of the things that will happen.  They need to describe what the viewer will see. 
   
3. Facilitate activities that connect literacy to visual media. Choose a book, folktales are perfect for this, and adapt it into a script.  Perform the script as a play or even make a video.  Or, watch a television show or movie and write down the scene changes and characters.  Analyze the show like you would a book.
4. Read like a performer.  Make clear that the author has done his or her best to dramatize the events of the story.  Read the dialogue with the right energy and expression.  Point out how italics and punctuation tells the reader how to read and, as a result, what is happening in the story.
5. Be flexible about what student's choose to read.  It is easy to reject graphic novels, comic books, the Internet, and other "non-standard" forms. The forms of writing and "creating meaning" are rapidly evolving and now include blogs, tweets, texts, Facebook messages, Myspace pages, and other multimedia communication formats that may well constitute the literacies of the future. I suggest embracing all forms of literacy as a way to keep kids connected to print.

I want to hear your ideas. Send them to paul@litart.com.