As we get closer to Memorial Day, the end of the school year looms large and brings us to the subject of summertime reading. There are more than enough lists of book recommendations and summer reading program than we know what to do with, so let’s take a moment to contemplate the subject of children and reading.
A few questions to jump-start your thinking:
~Can you make someone love to read? We learn to read at school but where do we learn to love to read?
~~In the beginning, it was all about enjoyment. What happened to the ideal reader who devoured all the stories we read to them when they were little children?
~How did we go from wanting our children to love reading to turning reading into a chore?
~ Did we stop reading to our children once they learned how to read?
~ Did we begin to ask the lethal question that can stop a reader cold: what does the story mean?
Let summer reading bring a sigh of relief —allow a child to let go of the school year tyranny of how many books they read, how many pages they read, the activities—the reading journals and logs that are meant to demonstrate how well they understand what they read—they can now read for the most important reason—pleasure! And they can read what they want to read!
• Nourish enthusiasm for story and reading.
• Don’t waste precious time trying to convince your child of the importance of reading—just read them great stories.
• Be an emissary for a book, a matchmaker— bring the right book to the right child at the right time.
• Allow children have to read and understand a story at their own pace.
• Fear of not understanding makes children feel that have been rejected by a book in particular and reading in general.
• Children become better readers when they enjoy the experience.
• Talking about a story, “conversational reading” is how children better understand what they read. Children who get more from the books they read are children who love to read.
• Let the most important outcome be, not how many books a child has read, but how many conversations they’ve had about them.
• Fifteen minutes of daily reading, at an average number of words per minute, = 38 books a year —but who is counting?
