|
A
young mother who we will call Jennifer (not her real name) came to my
office the other day and started the conversation with the following:
“My three-year old daughter will be starting Junior Kindergarten next
September. I would like to make sure that she has a good start. Can you
help me?”
ANALYSIS OF THE
SITUATION
I would like to share
my response to Jennifer with other parents who may be facing similar
concerns with their own sons or daughters.
My advice to you, Jennifer, can be summed up in one single
word…READ.
That’s right. Start buying as many books as you can for your
daughter, especially books that are about subjects in which she is
interested. My own granddaughter is interested in princess stories, so I
am starting to buy up every book I can find that is geared to pre-school
children on princesses and fairies. I would suggest you do the same for
your daughter.
While
it won’t come as much of a surprise to most of us in the education
field, there are now studies done that confirm the fact that North
American youth in
Canada
and the
United States
are spending less time reading for fun in
their free time than the previous generation.
Experts may differ on what must be done to encourage reading and to
instill more positive reading habits among young people, but they all
agree that this decline in the “love of reading” by our young people
will have a serious affect on not only their academic performance and
career prospects, but will also present challenges to them as they attempt
to take up their place in society.
Education Week
Newspaper published a report released by the National Endowment for the
Arts, a
United States
based organization, which indicated that
increased use of electronic media is the greatest cause of the decline in
reading for pleasure among young people.
The report also stated that the efforts of school systems to
improve functional reading skills in curriculum subject areas among young
students is not resulting in a “lifelong love of reading” and this is
leading not only to less time reading for enjoyment, but also to the loss
of reading-comprehension skills.
The study found that
less than 25% of all 17 year olds read every day for fun, and young people
between the ages of 15 and 24 read an average of ten (10) minutes or less
per day on articles and books that are not required reading for school or
work. This age group prefers to watch television, listen to music or spend
time on the internet or cell phones.
The report also found
that there is a strong correlation between reading for fun and success in
school and the workplace. The more time people spend reading for
enjoyment, the more successful they are in school and in their careers.
“People
who read outside of school or work volunteer at twice the rate of those
who don’t, they are three times more likely to participate in the arts,
they earn higher wages, they are twice as likely to exercise, they vote at
one and a half times the level of people who don’t read,” stated Mr.
Gioia, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. “Among people
who read, there is not merely a cultural transformation going on, but the
habit of reading does seem to awaken something in the individual.”
In another study of 36,000 school children from the
United States
,
Canada
and
Great Britain
, it was found that the most important
predictors of academic success of children by the junior grades are the
early reading and math skills that these children bring with them to
Junior or Senior Kindergarten.
Therefore, Jennifer, if
you can instill a love of reading in your daughter before she enters
Junior Kindergarten, there is a very good chance that she will maintain
that passion for the rest of her life. She will likely retain a positive
attitude towards school itself simply because she has a better than
average chance of being successful as a result of her love of reading.
RECOMMENDATION
We will assign a
personal tutor who will meet with your daughter once a week to help her
develop interest in reading through some strategic activities that will
show her that reading for fun can open up a whole new world.
The tutor will help you
develop a regular program which will include daily reading sessions where
you read orally to your daughter to help her develop her attention and
focusing skills. You will also have an assignment which will require you
and your daughter to look for things around the home and in the community
that can be read together. Show her that reading is everywhere. You will
build up a weekly vocabulary list which can be reviewed by the tutor each
week. Your job as a parent will be to demonstrate to your daughter that
reading has a purpose and that you can have “fun” reading together.
You should also make sure that your daughter sees you reading for pleasure
yourself every day. Try to have some “quiet” time after dinner where
you read your book and your daughter plays or reads her books. As long as
she sees you reading your books she will get the message.
Spend time talking to your daughter about what you are reading so
that the two of you can share your “discoveries”. You have a
tremendous impact on your daughter, so if she sees you reading for
pleasure, she will want to be just like you.
The best thing you can
do to ensure your child has every opportunity to enter into a successful
career as a young adult is make sure that she starts off in Junior
Kindergarten with a strong foundation in reading. Her early reading skills
and her love of reading will certainly help her get to the top of the
class immediately and stay there as long as she remains in school.
|
