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Reading motivation
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From: Robin Smith <robinsmith59>
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2004 17:40:22 -0500
Dean Schneider writing from Robin Smith's e-mail:
I agree completely with Esme's statement that unscheduled time is a great way to motivate reading. When our kids were growing up, we always felt that it was essential for kids to have time to be bored, to have to find something to do, that it wasn't our job to entertain them all of the time. There was always laundry to be done or floors to be vacuumed if you couldn't find something to do.If you read aloud every day, and you have a house full of books or you go to the library or bookstore regularly, chances are that one thing kids will find to do is reading. When they find good books to read and actually have time to read them, it's one of those simple miracles of life: kids read and read and read.
We always read aloud before bedtime, every night without fail, and our kids could then read in bed, and we made it a big deal that if you were reading, you could stay up past your bedtime. We went to libraries and bookstores and didn't shy away from spending money on books. We used to kid that we may not be able to pay for college, but our kids will grow up in a house full of books! (Of course, now we're wondering for real how to pay for college, now that we have that house full of books.) A great book, by the way, for book lovers is Cornelia Funke's Inkheart, all about a house full of books, and a book father and daughter pursued by evil book characters the father has brought to life by his amazing storytelling abilities.
I'm not against modest incentives if they seem necessary to motivate kids who haven't grown up, like Scout Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird, where reading is as second nature as breathing air. The danger is that reading for incentives becomes a habit, and kids might then only read for the payoff. But read-aloud guru Jim Trelease would say that we all do what we do for one payoff or another -- a paycheck, praise, bonuses, etc. I would just shy away from complicated systems before trying the old?shioned incentives of having good books around and time to read them. I highly recommend Jim Trelease's and Stephen D. Krashen's books as very relevant to this discussion.
This can work in school, too, at least in schools that have budgets for classroom libraries and main libraries and haven't squandered budgets on electronic diversions. I always have a class novel going with my 7th and 8th graders, but I also have a big classroom library, and I give lots of time to free reading. Teachers sometimes feel that reading aloud and free reading (Sustained Silent Reading) aren't really teaching, that they might be caught letting their kids read so much. But really, it's teaching that so often gets in the way of learning; we get so intent on teaching stuff, when it would often be better to just give kids time to read.
Dean Schneider Ensworth School Nashville, TN 37205 schneiderd at ensworth.com
Received on Wed 13 Oct 2004 05:40:22 PM CDT
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2004 17:40:22 -0500
Dean Schneider writing from Robin Smith's e-mail:
I agree completely with Esme's statement that unscheduled time is a great way to motivate reading. When our kids were growing up, we always felt that it was essential for kids to have time to be bored, to have to find something to do, that it wasn't our job to entertain them all of the time. There was always laundry to be done or floors to be vacuumed if you couldn't find something to do.If you read aloud every day, and you have a house full of books or you go to the library or bookstore regularly, chances are that one thing kids will find to do is reading. When they find good books to read and actually have time to read them, it's one of those simple miracles of life: kids read and read and read.
We always read aloud before bedtime, every night without fail, and our kids could then read in bed, and we made it a big deal that if you were reading, you could stay up past your bedtime. We went to libraries and bookstores and didn't shy away from spending money on books. We used to kid that we may not be able to pay for college, but our kids will grow up in a house full of books! (Of course, now we're wondering for real how to pay for college, now that we have that house full of books.) A great book, by the way, for book lovers is Cornelia Funke's Inkheart, all about a house full of books, and a book father and daughter pursued by evil book characters the father has brought to life by his amazing storytelling abilities.
I'm not against modest incentives if they seem necessary to motivate kids who haven't grown up, like Scout Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird, where reading is as second nature as breathing air. The danger is that reading for incentives becomes a habit, and kids might then only read for the payoff. But read-aloud guru Jim Trelease would say that we all do what we do for one payoff or another -- a paycheck, praise, bonuses, etc. I would just shy away from complicated systems before trying the old?shioned incentives of having good books around and time to read them. I highly recommend Jim Trelease's and Stephen D. Krashen's books as very relevant to this discussion.
This can work in school, too, at least in schools that have budgets for classroom libraries and main libraries and haven't squandered budgets on electronic diversions. I always have a class novel going with my 7th and 8th graders, but I also have a big classroom library, and I give lots of time to free reading. Teachers sometimes feel that reading aloud and free reading (Sustained Silent Reading) aren't really teaching, that they might be caught letting their kids read so much. But really, it's teaching that so often gets in the way of learning; we get so intent on teaching stuff, when it would often be better to just give kids time to read.
Dean Schneider Ensworth School Nashville, TN 37205 schneiderd at ensworth.com
Received on Wed 13 Oct 2004 05:40:22 PM CDT
