Owls take the top spot in our first reading count up this term with Kingfishers second and Robins third - well done everybody. 

Reading - skill or pleasure? 

The National Literacy Trust says: 
"There can be few things as powerful as regularly reading to a young child. It has astonishing benefits for children: comfort and reassurance, confidence and security, relaxation, happiness and fun. Giving a child time and full attention when reading them a story tells them they matter. It builds self-esteem, vocabulary, feeds imagination and even improves their sleeping patterns.

So why don't more parents do it?"

By the age of 5-7 years, statistics show that only about 44% of parents read books regularly to their children. There are all sorts of possible reasons why this might be - busy lives, crowded timetables, a corresponding rise of time spent on Youtube.

One of the more surprising reasons they suggest, though,  is that, when children reach school age, reading is increasingly perceived as a skill to be acquired or a piece of homework to be completed, rather than something to be done for pleasure. The child reads to their parents, the parent signs the reading record, and the job is done. 

This should give us pause for thought. It's certainly true that regular reading practice is vital to developing a child's skills as a reader. The blog last week talks about the importance of building good homework habits so that children get those skills nailed down. And it's certainly true that, the better you get at doing something - sports, music, cooking, gaming, whatever - the more fun and enjoyable it tends to be. But inspiring a love of reading is first and foremost about hearts and minds, and building skills from the ground up can sometimes feel like a bit of a slog. 

But...
The stories you read to children, rather than the ones they read to you, are the bits they will remember about their reading journey. So will you. I can't honestly recall much about the reading scheme books that got read to me, but I still remember the shrieks of delight when Charlie FINALLY found his golden ticket; and I remember the gasps of horror when Mr Tumnus revealed he had been a spy all along and was about to hand Lucy over to the White Witch; and I remember how much they laughed when I was Mr Noisy going shopping. 

Sometimes I'm lucky enough to wander down the corridors at school during our (jealously protected) storytime session at the end of the day, and hear roars of laughter from the various classroom doors at the antics of Stig of The Dump and Mr Magnolia; or tense silence as the boys in Holes suddenly spot the deadly toxic yellow spotted lizard they didn't know was there; or cheers as Sophie finally makes the perilous climb onto the roof in Rooftoppers. 

Listening to their adults reading stories is the thing that makes children fall in love with books. Think of it like learning a musical instrument. You have to practise your scales and learn the notes, and that is important, and that takes time and discipline and patience - but that's about skills, not pleasure, and it can be a bit of a slog, and it doesn't win hearts and minds. Listening to Mozart or Vivaldi or Aretha Franklin or Bohemian Rhapsody or the Imperial March from Star Wars or Taylor Swift or whatever makes your particular spine tingle -  you can do that before you can play anything like that yourself, and that's the thing that will keep you inspired and engaged and build your relationship with music and, ultimately, make a musician of you. Reading is exactly the same. 

So this weekend, parents, can I encourage you to rebel just a little bit?* Just for fifteen minutes. Put the school reading books and phonics cards away. Find a book or a story that you absolutely love and sit down and read that book to your child instead. They can read too, if they like, or they can just sit and listen. It could be a chapter of your favourite children's novel or a picture book. Do the voices. Do the actions. Laugh together. And do make note it in their reading record, because this is a hugely important part of developing our children as readers (and let's face it, if you're carrying off the most brilliant performance of Mr Chatterbox or Superworm or The BFG or the Demon Dentist, your achievements probably deserve to go on the record too!) 

Have a lovely weekend. Keep reading! (and do the voices....) 

Richelle Mead Quote: “Some people read books for fun.”

 


* this isn't rebellion, really. It's fine to do this every single bedtime (although please do get them to practise their own reading as well!) 




(Full article from the Literacy Trust here) 
https://literacytrust.org.uk/blog/reading-children-so-powerful-so-simple-and-yet-so-misunderstood/