As a woman, a mom and a primary teacher, I have to say I love reading! I read for enjoyment, for professional development, and for gaining knowledge on raising boys and being a better wife and mom. I pick what I am interested in and don't worry about readability, the book level or a possible AR test! I read because I LOVE reading!
A quick glance at my nightstand boasts my summer picks and my cherished Nook! Professional books are the only ones I don't purchase on the Nook as I like to highlight, take notes and insert post its for easy reference.
So reading is part of my life. I read to my children while I was pregnant. I read to them as babies. I know the research. Literacy is my passion!
But then my boys learned to walk...and talk...and they couldn't get away from books fast enough! They had no interest as they were on the move! I quickly learned to capture their attention at bed time as they were a captive audience with no where to go! They would pick a book or two for us to read each night... Those were the days!
So let's have some #realtalk! My boys don't LOVE to read anymore! Most days, they don't even like to read. Insert heavy sigh here. This mama's heart is so sad. This teacher's heart is heavy. How can I blog about fostering a love of reading with my students when my own children have missed the boat on this?
Do we, as a school system, turn children away from reading? We test their sight words, their fluency and their comprehension. When they finish a book, they take an AR test. With Common Core and other state standards, we are modeling for students how to dig deeper into the test. This takes multiple readings of the same text. We are encouraging students to read more non-fiction. They need to site text evidence. And then at the end of the year they need to take a state reading test.
AND WE WONDER WHY CHILDREN
DON'T LOVE READING!
My goal for my boys and for my students is to foster a love of reading. So when my youngest says he wants the next book in the Nate the Great series, I am going embrace this and encourage it. You see, earlier this summer, I tried to talk him into reading books with a higher reading level and deeper content. He totally fell asleep while reading!! #epicfail
So, what do we as parents do?
Jen Jones from Hello Literacy shares how to find out 7 ways to get your kids to know without even realizing it!! Jen cautions us away from "summer mandated reading time" because isn't that what we as parents and teachers do...to avoid the summer slide?
I challenge you to join me in finding meaningful ways to encourage our children and students to read throughout the summer! I am going to suggest some of the apps from Hello Literacy's post to my own kids and maybe...just maybe...I can sneak a little more reading in!
Yes! Yes! Yes! *faints* This is a systemic problem! We need to be so cautious! We need to keep working on letting kids read lots of things that THEY want to read. If I am completely honest, out of 250 books on my Kindle Cloud...probably 12 of them are non fiction...10 of those are cooking books. The rest are romance. I don't know why we force our kids to read fifty-two bazillion genres of book when WE don't want to do that ourselves. Food for thought here! :) Thanks for sharing candidly on this topic! ;) I think a lot of moms would echo this! :) Especially in the summer!
ReplyDeleteI found myself hooked as a young girl on Nancy Drew- I would sit in the summer on a lawn chair reading book after book. My mom couldn't keep up with taking me to the public library!
ReplyDeleteI always have about five books that I'm reading at the same time. It depends on which one I feel like reading when I sit down to read. I agree. We want students to enjoy reading and become lifelong readers. It's so important to not only expose them to different genres, but to allow them to make choices in the books they read. I had to rethink my Read to Self time this past year to allow for more choices. Thanks for sharing this important reminder.
ReplyDeleteWhen my sons were younger, they only wanted to read...BASEBALL CARDS! So...let them read! I remember sitting at an IEP for one of my twins ( other brother in bilingual GATE class) and they said. " He doesn't have enough VOCABULARY for his grade level! ( I'm a teacher..#failure )...so I asked him... " Tell the folks what tools are in our garage....What are the stats of your favorite baseball player? What is one of the plays the 49er's use in a football game? " He spoke for about 20 minutes NON-STOP...Needless to say...his vocab was higher than some of the adults at the table! No, he could NOT list all the needed vocabulary from a story he didn't care about...but make it his??? HE OWNED IT! #nomoreIEP's wendy 1stgradefireworks
ReplyDeleteAs a K-5 Reading Specialist, I especially find this true of boys. Have you seen the website Guys Read http://www.guysread.com? It was created for boys by the author Jon Scieszka who wrote Math Curse and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs. It is fabulous because you can search for books that are similar to series, topics, or authors that you already like. i recommend it to many parents.
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