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Reading Motivation
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From: Maia Cheli-Colando <maia>
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2004 13:41:17 -0700
Esme's comment rings a (nonintrusive!) bell with me. My mother was an attorney; my stepfather a psychiatrist. I didn't see them much during the week when I was growing up. What I remember most from the daily routine of my late elementary and middle school years were books. I had all the time I needed for reading after school (they hadn't really invented homework yet, or not much of it), and for dancing, listening to music and playing in the yard. I was a solitary child on most of these afternoons and early evenings, and that was just fine.
When I think back to my childhood, all those unschooled hours make me smile.
If my own daughter had less unstructured time now, I'm pretty sure she would read less well. Yes, she still loves to have us read to her, and we do... but she also spends hours every day staring at this book and that, reading, puzzling it out, and making up her own stories. She will be six at the New Year. And she is the one with a university library card, not me!
Which brings me to another thought: do list schoolteachers take field trips to local libraries? It would seem to me that getting kids library cards at either public libraries or, where available, college/university libraries, would be empowering. There is nothing like wandering the stacks to help you realize that, whatever the limits of your own school may be, there is a whole other world out there!
A final thought: I think that tests ruin books. Tests are not the point.... and if they become the point, then part of the living, unique relationship between reader and written is dead, killed, flattened upon asphalt. There are other ways to know if a child is engaging with a book... journal entries, skits, songs, poems, soccer games (think of the scene in Dead Poets Society)... but testing on books frightens me. It feels like a betrayal of the relationships we each develop within the world of a book.
And with that, I'm off to read whatever my daughter has chosen for us for the afternoon! :)
Maia
Received on Wed 13 Oct 2004 03:41:17 PM CDT
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2004 13:41:17 -0700
Esme's comment rings a (nonintrusive!) bell with me. My mother was an attorney; my stepfather a psychiatrist. I didn't see them much during the week when I was growing up. What I remember most from the daily routine of my late elementary and middle school years were books. I had all the time I needed for reading after school (they hadn't really invented homework yet, or not much of it), and for dancing, listening to music and playing in the yard. I was a solitary child on most of these afternoons and early evenings, and that was just fine.
When I think back to my childhood, all those unschooled hours make me smile.
If my own daughter had less unstructured time now, I'm pretty sure she would read less well. Yes, she still loves to have us read to her, and we do... but she also spends hours every day staring at this book and that, reading, puzzling it out, and making up her own stories. She will be six at the New Year. And she is the one with a university library card, not me!
Which brings me to another thought: do list schoolteachers take field trips to local libraries? It would seem to me that getting kids library cards at either public libraries or, where available, college/university libraries, would be empowering. There is nothing like wandering the stacks to help you realize that, whatever the limits of your own school may be, there is a whole other world out there!
A final thought: I think that tests ruin books. Tests are not the point.... and if they become the point, then part of the living, unique relationship between reader and written is dead, killed, flattened upon asphalt. There are other ways to know if a child is engaging with a book... journal entries, skits, songs, poems, soccer games (think of the scene in Dead Poets Society)... but testing on books frightens me. It feels like a betrayal of the relationships we each develop within the world of a book.
And with that, I'm off to read whatever my daughter has chosen for us for the afternoon! :)
Maia
Received on Wed 13 Oct 2004 03:41:17 PM CDT
