Find out what kind of books the kids want to read. If the children don't enjoy them, they won't read them.
Make sure each child is reading for at least 20 minutes a day, four days a week. This is not an age-specific goal, so this is for any child. If a child is struggling, start with a shorter period of time and build up to 20 minutes. The time you use this benchmarking can span a few weeks to a few months depending on how much of a commitment the child needs to make.
Have the children write four to five sentences about what they read in the 20-minute period. Make sure the kids do this right after the reading time. If writing is a challenge for some of them, lower the amount of sentences required or have them draw a picture. Otherwise, enforce your rule stipulating a certain amount of sentences. Push them to challenge themselves instead of looking for whatever is easiest.
Review the children's reading journals after a week. Make note of any improvements or breakthroughs and make adjustments as necessary.
Set up an interview with each child. Get the students involved and provide them with a tangible way to look back at how far they've come. An interview will help you better understand where each child is in terms of development and evaluate what you need to do to help them reach their goals. It may also be helpful in seeing what goals to set for each student based on what they say.
Provide the students with an evaluation paper on which they can draw and write their goals, state how they intend to reach them and evaluate them. Getting the kids involved in this process may help them develop critical thinking as well.
Set-up another one-on-one meeting with each student. Follow up to review goals and help the students realize what their current goals should be.
Research local reading events that are coming up or are currently taking place. These events can be related to genres, authors or be a part of larger celebrations. You can create your own event centered around a favorite author, but make sure the author has a lot of published work. An example of an event might be Women's History Month, or an author could be Shel Silverstein.
Gauge your the kids' interest in these events and decide on an festival or author that works best for your class.
Set a goal for the kids to read a certain amount of books by the selected author or books that fit with the event you selected. If you went with Women's History Month, you could set a goal to read five books about famous women in history, or your goal could be to read five books about women in general.