Archive for category: Reading theory

Kids love rewards.

If you’re having a tough time getting your child to read, try a reading reward chart.

Make a graph with a week’s worth of days. Your child puts a sticker on each day you read together. (Fifteen to 30 minutes is ideal.) Or, your chart can be for when your child reads alone, or when she reads a specific book for 15 minutes at a time, or for 15 minutes’ worth of writing – whatever you’re working on.

Some kids are motivated by the stickers, alone. Others need a reward – for every week that has four or more stickers, the child gets a small toy. It’s important to choose and, I think, buy the reward first.

The child will be more motivated when she knows what she’s playing for. (May I suggest – a book?) Put the reward on a shelf so she can see it, but not use it, until it’s been earned.

And of course, adjust the reward so it fits your child. The length of the reading sessions and the number needed for the reward should be whatever will work for your child. Using fun stickers often helps.

Encourage her to tell her grandparents, friends, teachers and everyone you can think of, that she’s doing a reading chart. Research shows that people are more likely to succeed when others know about their project.

Don’t go dollar-store on this one. The toys are too cheap and break too easily. Think Silly Putty, a bakugan, hockey cards, doll accessory or comic book. Ironically, dollar stores do have really good books like Caillou or maze/activity books. Pick up a handful and put ‘em in your sock drawer until they’re earned.

Kids who live in a “reading home” will be readers, it’s as simple as that.

What does that mean, and how do you create a reading culture in your home? Here are some key things you can do to create a “reading home”:

*Read to your child every day.

*Have lots of books around. Give your child his own books.

*Let your child read things he’s interested in.

*Go to the library together every two or three weeks.

*Let your child see you reading.

*Ask your child questions about what he’s reading. Be interested in what he’s reading.

*Let your child read to you.

*Offer him a variety of reading options. Novels, comic books, picture books, manuals, recipe books, pages printed from the Internet, graphic novels, magazines, even the side of the cereal box at breakfast time – it’s all reading.

*Set limits on TV and video-game time (“screen time”).

If you can only do one thing, to create a reader, it should be: “read to your child.” Every book and website about reading says the same thing. Read to your child, every day. It’s the most important thing.

This is kind of counter-intuitive, so bear with me.

Let’s say you’re labelling bins in your young child’s playroom. This one is for cars, this one is for balls, this is where the action figures go.

It can be really tempting to draw a car, rather than write the word “CAR” on the label. After all, if the child is too young to read, images would more easily show him where the cars go, right?

While that’s true, it’s the wrong thing to do if you’re trying to help him learn to read. Instead of pictures, print the words “CARS” or “BALLS” or even “ACTION FIGURES” on the bins. Your child will memorize them in no time, and now they’ll know three or four words they didn’t know before.

In fact, you’ll discover that they’re able to pick out the word “ball” or “car” in their first storybooks right away. Kids are sponges. If they’re going to soak up information, give them something worth soaking up.

This happens all the time in companies, too. Often the “stop” button in a manufacturing line will feature an image of a stop sign, rather than the word STOP, for non-English speakers. It’s well-meaning, but it doesn’t help the person who’s learning to read English. Always give the person a bigger challenge than you think they can handle – they’ll rise to it.

It makes sense, when you think about it.

Dogs enjoy any story you read to them, they don’t judge when you get a word wrong, and they have an enormous attention span.

A non-profit organization in Chicago, Sit Stay Read!, uses trained dogs to help children read. The kids read to the dogs, and the dogs make reading more fun and relaxing for the children.

If your child has a pet, why not suggest she read to it?

Just don’t read it one of those PETA brochures – it might get funny ideas and petition for equal rights. Woof!

Update: MaryEllen, of Sit Stay Read! suggests these tips for reading with your dog.

Let me count the ways.

It’s important that children discover that books can be used many different ways. Here’s how we’re using the books we got for Christmas.

*My husband and our son had a great time going through his new Guiness Book of Records, giggling over the disgusting records (biggest earthworm) and discussing the sports ones;

*We’ll be using his new cookbook in the new year to bake some treats (and learn measurements);

*Our son loved his new, personalized book and was thrilled to see his picture on the back cover;

*Our son has already started reading his new Bailie School Kids series;

*He loved the Sports Illustrated for Kids Santa gave him in his stocking;

*His new joke books are going to keep us groaning well into the new year;

*Not to mention his puzzle book, Owl magazine, Space book with tons of facts about meteorites and planets, and Build It Bigger – a book about the world’s largest building projects.

So he’s got lots of reading options – to read alone, with mom and dad, to read to us aloud, or just flip through and look at the pictures. It was definitely a reading Christmas.

Hope you had a great holiday. We’ll be taking a new bag of books (thanks, Julie!) to the Children’s Book Bank in the new year so please do drop your donations off with me.

Give the gift of reading.

Have you taught your child how to read a newspaper?

I don’t mean the words themselves. I mean how a newspaper works. What a headline is. Where the author’s name is, and how to tell what’s happening in the pictures. Where does the rest of the article go off the front page? Why are there sections? And how to use the index to find the comics (very important).

This kind of information is crucial to a newspaper reader, because it helps you understand what to read, what you should skip, and what you can skim. It helps put the images in context. For instance, the same photo on the front of the Style section, and the front of the News section would have very different meanings.

Beginning readers need to know that they don’t have to (and shouldn’t) read every word of the newspaper. They need to understand what advertisements are vs. articles, what headlines and subheads are for, and how to tell which article goes with which picture.

You wouldn’t do this all at once, of course. Even a thirty-second explanation could have a huge impact. Let’s say you’re reading the paper in the morning and your child is eating her breakfast. Why not take the section that would be most interesting to her, and point out an article. Show her the headline, and the photo, and tell her what’s happening in the article.

Thirty seconds. That may be all she needs to get started – and curious. And curiosity creates amazing readers.

Newspapers are great because there’s something for everyone. You child might enjoy the sports section, the comics, the main news, or fashion. Just keep them away from any articles that could be too scary – like in the business section.

I’m reading Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, by Maryanne Wolf, a researcher who explains, among other things, how the brain learns to read.

This goes along with my last post, about considering books as a “treasure.”

Once you think of books that way, you can’t help but have a certain reverence for them and this in turn reinforces the idea that they contain something valuable. Accordingly, I don’t allow books on the floor, or to be thrown or stepped on. That’s just not cool in our house.

Understandably, books get torn and damaged through everyday use – that’s different. When they do get banged up, they’re repaired as soon as possible. I don’t make anyone feel bad about accidentally damaging a book, because if you feel you have to pussy-foot around books you’ll be afraid to open them.

But really, you don’t step on a treasure chest – you open it. And you savour the treasure.

How did I get my son to treat his books kindly? When I walk in his room and there’s a book on the floor, I gasp. I say, “There’s a book on the floor!” as if I just can’t believe it. (And I kind of can’t.) He got the message early on, and now he doesn’t like to see a book mistreated either.

When I see a book, I think of it as a “treasure chest.”

The person who opens the cover will discover infinite possibilities – excitement, emotion, great characters, facts, new ideas! When I leave a book on my son’s bed for him to “find,” it’s like I’m leaving him buried treasure.

Sometimes I’ll sweeten the pot a little. As I put the book down I’ll say, “Hmph, I never knew that was the largest land animal! It’s all in there.” And then I’ll walk out of the room, leaving him alone with this – treasure – to find.

Consider how different “books contain treasure” is from “reading is hard work.” Who wants to open a book if it’s going to mean work? Who doesn’t want to open a treasure chest?!

An attitude shift from the parent is often all that’s needed to elicit a big change in the child. Change the way you think about books, and so will your child.