Reading is one of the most important human skills, which also marked the beginning of his education along with the language skills of writing, speaking and listening. It appears as an important task of the Croatian language course, the goal of which is to develop reading needs and habits to create mature readers. Learning to read is actually mastering a series of reading skills that are interconnected and subordinate to the basic type of reading - understanding the whole. The process of learning to read ends in the third grade of primary school, and develops through four stages: preschool stage, initial reading, improvement in reading and mature reading. A child who has a positive attitude towards reading is motivated to read. The aim of this paper is to determine whether the teacher's reading habits affect the students' motivation to read. With this work, we wanted to examine the reading habits of primary education teachers and what methods are used to teach and encourage reading in students. The survey was conducted electronically and 249 teachers participated in it. There are many methods of encouraging reading, and their purpose is to create an active reader, stimulate curiosity and develop an interest in the written word. The conducted research shows that teachers read for pleasure and feel like readers, but only at a slightly older age. The conducted research brings interesting results about the daily habits of teachers and the methods they use in class to encourage reading in students. The teacher's approach is crucial for the creation of reading interests and culture and habits as training for independent reading and reception of a literary work. Children become interested in reading very early in preschool age, and in order for the student to continue reading and create a habit of reading, the educational system should abound in reading for pleasure. The methods most often used by teachers to motivate students are the conversation method and the method of asking questions about what has been read.