Getting Children to Read

| Tasha

The Telegraph has a great article about what schools need to do to inspire a love of reading in children. 

"This is my reading group," one of the teachers proudly explained to Rosen. After two prodigiously active years promoting a love of books, in schools and out, Rosen’s antennae are well tuned to a telling trend. "Wonderful," he thought. "But what are the others doing?"

"Between the ages of four and nine," he says, "reading books is regarded as optional. Some schools take it seriously, but others say there is no time and fall back on worksheets which are torn-up extracts of books. It is really dangerous. Children don’t even read the whole chapter. The idea of engaging with what happens, with the thoughts and feelings of a story, has disappeared.

"It is not built into most schools’ ethos. If we want children to have access to complex ideas then the most fruitful way is the reading of whole books."

I agree with this.  But don’t we also need to tell parents that it is their job to raise readers?  And how about librarians?  Isn’t it our job too to try to entice, entertain and encourage young readers?  I don’t think it’s a simple answer of if only teachers would do more.  I think it is a complicated formula of parents, teachers, librarians and great books that make the difference.

How about you?  What’s your reaction?

6 thoughts on “Getting Children to Read”

  1. i agree. as a teacher i am tired of the normal expectation being that everything is the teacher’s responsibility. you gave birth to the child- engage in a conversation with them, take them to the library, ask them about their day, check their homework! don’t get me started! 🙂

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  2. Absolutely – a child needs a whole team of adults in their lives, all encouraging them to read, helping them seek out books that speak to them.

    Parents read about 700 picture books to their young children every year – that’s a huge amount of books to come up with! Or you end up reading the same ones over and over again…

    My question as a librarian is: how can we reach out into the community of parents and help them find good books for their kids?

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  3. I have to say that yes, I wish they were reading more books in my children’s pre-K and Kindergarten classes, but at the same time, my 4 year old is already reading, and was before she started school. Why? Because my husband and I read with my two kids for 20 minutes a day, and they already have the book bug. Librarians and teachers can certainly cultivate what’s already there, but I firmly believe kids learn by example. Mama = bookgeek = children = bookgeeks.

    So maybe teachers could somehow educate parents as well . . . though I can see a lot of parents blowing off advice too.

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  4. Thanks for the link to the Telegraph article. It’s a thorny question, isn’t it? I was interested in the teacher who had the after-school reading club so that he wouldn’t have to have a measurable result from the children’s interaction with books.

    We don’t teach kids how to play video games or ride bikes in school, and yet they learn how to do those things and enjoy them. Maybe the answer is for schools to teach kids HOW to read and let the rest of society teach them how to LOVE it. And, as you mention, that is where public librarians come in.

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  6. Absolutely, parents and teachers need to work together in developing advent readers. And not every method works with every kid.
    W
    hen I first taught my children to read, I used a method of phonics, but quickly realized this worked for my eldest but not my youngest. She didn’t grasp reading. So after trial and error I began to realize she was a visual learner who needed both elements to learn to read. She only became successful in learning after the sound and visual were combined. And now she is reading at a higher grade level than her fellow students.

    I have seen a huge improvement, and suggest for anyone whose kid is struggling with reading to try using both sound and visual to help their kid overcome it too.

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