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by Rosemary Lee Potter, Ed.D.
Special to Tropical Breeze
Well, it won't be long now. Summer is on
its way, although there still is about two weeks of school to go.
These upcoming school days are devoted, among other final academic
work and award events, to children's finishing up their reading
for the school year. Textbook readers, assigned novels, related
workbooks, selected and quizzed on titles from a library and quiz
database by Scholastic called Reading Counts—hurry! Time to
finish up! Take and pass quizzes. Finish a reading log.
So now summer is a'coming! For many
students the end of the school year means hooray and bye-bye to
reading, that is, having to reading regularly or anything at all!
Yet how dare they celebrate farewell to reading? Reading ala school
is unfortunately often seen as just an assignment. So school's
out. Get it? So c'mon! Give it a break. Reading!
Parents need to recognize that the student
who suddenly stops reading for several months, after reading daily
for the whole school year, may, by breaking his/her momentum, slow
down his/her continued reading development and growth. At the very
least, the youngster's speed or pace of reading may decline.
So what to do? Should a sensible teacher
or parent then require reading activities to continue during the
summer school holiday? Wait a minute! To the extent that summer
reading is presented in some negative way, absolutely not! What
with some students telling me that they find that required reading
in the summer would be an intrusion on their so-called "time-off"
from school. Too bad, when, in fact, many students show up in
autumn really eager to tell me and their classmate peer-readers all
about what they read while on vacation. Very often it turns out
these reading enthusiasts were hooked on highly motivating,
popular, current titles in adventure or fantasy books in series.
Ask any school or public librarian or the book buyers in the
several large local bookstores and they will quickly show you to
those kind of multiple title books!
Here, though, besides discovering these
winners — are several positive, pro-summer-reading ideas
which some successful parents have shared with me! For them these
four tips have truly kept the reading ball rolling all summer!
Many's the time I've had a student go to
the school library and actually look for books, either the hundreds
sitting on promotional shelves or online in the catalog, and yet,
after a short while, just give up trying to get a book. Such a
student often returns to class frankly overwhelmed, saying
something like "I couldn't find anything, anything I liked." Mind
you that school's library has more than 5,000 titles for the
Reading Counts program alone! While there are no automatically
perfect book matches, there surely must be something he/she could
enjoy reading!
So parents:
Tip One. Remember the old saying "you can
lead a horse to water, but…? However, before school is out,
start everybody up the summer library trail. Make it fun. Be sure
to go when it does not conflict with some other great plan. But go.
If the student is a teen — point him/her to the teen or YA
(Young Adult) room. Get little folks to the recreational story
hours.
Tip Two: Pick up summer reading lists from
school and libraries. These give you a head's-up on what's hot
and probably what's not! Check the newsletters at the public
library. There are usually summer reading programs with books,
books, books as well as activities and events and for different age
groups!
Tip Three: Set up a household-wide reading
contest. Every family member, young and old sets the number of
books he/she will read before school starts again. For little ones,
it counts, if they listen to mom read, but everybody who can read,
enters the contest. At summer's end, those family members who met
their reading goal get together for a movie or pizza party, or
both. About half way through, parents can boost slower readers by
shared-reading with them, such as "I'll read this page. You read
the next one."
One clever parent gave extra book points
to those older children who read to younger siblings. At the end,
everyone earned the party and movie, a family-wide celebration of
reading!
Tip Four: Once, a reluctant reader brought
in a beautiful edition of the Mark Twain classic, Tom Sawyer. "It
was a gift," he said. He was not reading very quickly, but it was
obvious he was reading it. The bookmark steadily moved backward.
Proud as he was of his book, he was prouder to have read it
through.
Many parents have given their children
books to read. One parent took her daughter to a large bookstore's
juvenile section. She told the girl that she could have any one
book she chose herself. The mom did not expect what happened. Not
only did the girl, then ten years old, enjoy and appreciate that
opportunity, but she also took her impressed mom on a lengthy,
detailed tour of many titles she already knew on the bookshelves,
this before she finally selected one to own! Her choice was
Everything on a Waffle by Polly Horvath. This book is about a girl
who insists her parents have not perished in a storm and stays with
townspeople while waiting for their return. Each chapter is active,
humorous, and includes a recipe at end. The mom reported that the
girl first read the book and then used it as a cookbook!
Hint: Just happen to stock the car with
books and magazines. Parents as reading motivators show how much
your family matters.
© 2007 Rosemary Lee Potter. All
Rights Reserved.
Rosemary Lee Potter, Ed.D., has been a
teacher since 1960, including 21 years at Safety Harbor Middle
School, and is now a reading teacher at Carwise Middle School, Palm
Harbor. Contact her at
This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
or by mail in care
of Tropical Breeze, P.O. Box 585, Safety Harbor, FL 34695.
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