Top tips from your ticked off teacher to make summer reading as painless as possible
Ticked off with your children for refusing to read over the holidays? Research suggests that children lose an average of two months of reading skills over the summer (1), start their year off right by keeping reading over the summer. Here are this teacher’s tips to help you be less ticked off.
1) Stop the bribery
We all do it. It is so tempting to offer a reward in return for your child’s cooperation with reading – however, you might be setting yourself up for an uphill battle. We don’t reward children for doing things they enjoy, so by enticing them with a reward, you are associating reading with being an unpleasurable activity. That’s exactly the opposite attitude of a life-long attitude to reading. Sorry, but the iPad time and chocolate buttons are out!
2) Timing is key
Think about when your child is most pleasant and productive. For 90% of children, that’s early in the day, before they’re too tired. So many parents stress themselves out trying to force their children to read before bed when they’re already overtired. Reading needs to be part of the consistent daily routine, how about trying for 10 minutes each day after breakfast instead? That way the minimum amount of reading is done and neither of you are dreading the battle at bedtime.
3) Imitation, imitation, imitation
Be honest with yourself, how often does your child see you read? There is a plethora of research to support the importance of children seeing their parents read (2). Think about it, would your child sit and calmly eat a plate of broccoli if you nagged them to while watching you eat a greasy pizza? The same principle applies here. You have to walk the walk to show your child that you not only value reading but find it a pleasurable activity. Make sure that your child ‘catches’ you reading and try to plan reading time as a family. Try the DARE approach, ‘Drop Everything And Read’, to make reading a fun family activity.
4) Mix it up
Children have access to well-structured reading programmes at school, but it is hard for a teacher to take 30 childrens’ interests onboard when planning the curriculum. At home, you have the opportunity to investigate what your child enjoys reading and allow them to take the lead. A trip to a local library to flick through different books and give your child the agency to pick their own reading material can be transformative. Alternatively, you can try websites like LoveReading4Kids where there are hundreds of first chapters of books that you could read together before finding and ordering a book that interests them most.
5) Don’t forget non-fiction
Think about your own preferences as a reader. Many adults read non-fiction the majority of the time. However, we often put pressure on our children to exclusively read fiction. When dealing with a reluctant reader, reading anything for pleasure is a great start! Explore traditional sources of non-fiction, e.g. books at the library, FirstNews, The Week Junior, Newsround. Newsela is a great source of non-fiction articles that can be adjusted for different ‘lexile’ (similar to reading age) levels.
Good luck and remember to keep trying. Share your tips and comments below.
Signed,
Sources
- https://teach.mapnwea.org/impl/MAPGrowthNormativeDataOverview.pdf
- https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/families/article/1838357/seeing-believing-encouraging-your-kids-read-wont-work-if-you-dont
Ticked Off Teacher 
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