Keep Wiggly Kids Engaged During Reading Time

The biggest shift for us came when we stopped asking, “How do we make the child fit the format?” and started asking, “How do we make the format match the child’s natural rhythm?”

The first major change we made was to add physical movement to reading. Instead of expecting children to sit still to read, we now expect them to read in conjunction with doing light movement (e.g., walking, swaying, while listening to or reading a story).

For us, the most surprising benefit of adding movement to reading was not only that the children had more focus but also had a better understanding of what they read. When children have regulated bodies, their minds can focus. For many children, especially those with incredibly high energy levels, sitting still creates friction instead of discipline.

We also took reading and created an easy to follow structure to create reading intervals that are shorter (i.e., 10-15 minute reading sprints) but that have clear beginnings and end points. An easy way to create this structure was to use timers. Using timers greatly reduced overwhelm for the children and helped them feel that they are making progress.

The net effect of these changes has been reduced resistance, fewer meltdowns, and more meaningful connections for children with the reading material.

Focus isn’t only defined as removing distractions; sometimes you need to remove your own expectations in order to focus.

When a child struggles to sit still or sustain attention during reading time, I adapt the setup so the reading task stays clear and the environment does not compete for their attention. The most effective single adjustment I have made is creating a distraction-free reading space with minimal visual and noise input. That change helps the child devote more mental energy to understanding the text, rather than constantly filtering what is happening around them. It also reduces frustration because the child is not repeatedly pulled off task, which can make reading feel like a series of failures. The goal is to meet the child where they are and remove unnecessary barriers while keeping the content and expectations for comprehension intact.

The single most effective adjustment we made was giving children a job to do for each other rather than asking them to receive from an adult.

In StoryQuest, children work in pairs. One child is the storyteller. The other is the scribe. The scribe’s job is to listen, capture, and reflect back: have I got that right? Tell me more. They do not correct. They do not redirect. They listen until the story has fully landed.

What we discovered across nine schools with 465 children is that children who cannot sustain attention during adult-led reading engage completely when they are responsible for another child’s story. The accountability is peer-to-peer. The stakes are real in the way that only a child’s relationship with another child can make them real.

The child who cannot sit still for a teacher will sit still for a friend who is trusting them with their story.

That is not a behaviour management technique. It is a relationship dynamic. And it is the thing that no literacy programme we have encountered puts at its centre the way StoryQuest does.

This depends. If the child has ADHD then changing the environment isn’t going to do much in this context – you have two options: 1) Change the book itself, to something that they are inherently interested in – then they’ll be able to maintain attention on it. 2) Break it into small chunks – depending on their age, the complexity of learning material, and so on this could be sentences, paragraphs, or pages. They would need to be given an outcome for each chunk, e.g. Read page 12 and tell me X about it. Then they have a goal, a shorter time period in which they can focus on reaching that goal, and can separate that each time from the exercise of reading the book as a whole.