What and how much should you read? Anything that isn’t nailed down while you’re working the crowbar to free the book. I did not read until the fourth grade I spent the summer between third and fourth grades sitting outside and sounding out Compton’s encyclopedia. What did you do this summer? Learned how to read. Oh? Yes, hand me a book from the shelf and Ill read it for you. Well, I read the book aloud and explained what it had said. My difficulty was not dyslexia as it turned out but undiagnosed Amblyopia. In contrast, my younger sister was born reading and found it amusing that her older sister was in the bottom reading group in her classroom. Got her later when she read Penny Lope and I corrected her. Penelope.
We were very fortunate that our mother read constantly and never went anywhere without a book. She believed we could read anything regardless of our ages if we could access and process text. I remember the shock when another parent saw my sister of eight years reading David the King. I always carry a book. My heart sings when I see a child carry a book.
In any event, I firmly believe in a culture of reading in which parents read, kids read and we read separately and together. We heard the classics from Bambi to Silas Marner read aloud in the car and in the home. We were not expected to enjoy or agree with a text as much as be familiar with it. I think that is an important idea. Reading for pleasure is not necessarily reading for fun. Some books are boring, but that doesn’t mean you don’t read them. I’m talking to you, Heidi!
I believe parents should model and encourage reading and by the presence or reading materials in the home from lots of sources. Kindle is a great option if you don’t mind losing the smell and feel of books or can’t live without turning pages (and know the words on the next page before turning it. There are electronic libraries. Some individual with LD or a visual disorder access text though a different means such as audiotext or Braille . Some may apply to RFBD that is now named?
Family quiet time or reading time worked for us. What a you reading? A soup can. Reading proficiency improves by learning how to read recipes and cook, to follow a manual to do something, reviewing directions and looking at graphs to assemble something. Google, follow the weather, keep up with the Kardashians, whatever. We had books at home, library cards, and a bookmobile at school every week (we were allowed to select books from any section or aisle).
We had summer reading programs where we accumulated dinosaurs or the current sticker on a poster were fun and watching the number of our stickers grow was satisfying. We had our own little display at hom3. Reading aloud to each other helped get through long prose as in Russian novels.
Since I was a child, I had a dictionary next to me to look up words I didn’t know. I wrote the single-word definition in the text. This is a great way to expand vocabulary.
I am a lector at church. I heard passages from the Old and New Testaments from childhood so could recite them. However, as lector, I varied and practiced pacing, emphasis, pitch, etc, aloud and decided how I would read the passages the most meaningfully. Something else I learned was people listened and heard, but were not nasty. We all survived the crock cowing thrice;
So, it isn’t so important what your read or how you access text.As you become a better reader reading becomes natural like air Opportunities to read are all around us. Reading is the greatest cure for boredom. Remember: Reading is fundamental!
