Pupils’ reading motivation and teacher’s activities for enhancing it

Numerous studies report the decrease of reading motivation in higher grades of elementary school, which can be considered as a big problem. Therefore, in our study we examined (1) what kind of activities teacher can use to maintain pupils’ reading motivation and if and to what degree teachers’ beliefs about the importance of reading and reading goals relate to their activities in the classroom and (2) what is the relationship between reading motivation, reading behaviour and reading achievements. 1178 seventh grade pupils and 67 Slovene teachers from 24 elementary school participated in the present study. The results show that teachers who highly value reading and find reading goals important read to their pupils, teach them how to use different reading strategies and use various reading materials more frequently. Such teacher’s behaviours have implications for pupils’ reading motivation. Activities that have the strongest effect on pupils’ extrinsic and intrinsic motivation and their competence are teacher’s teaching of reading strategies and frequency of reading in the classroom. Pupils who are more motivated for reading read more and more frequent and have better reading (academic) achievements