According to the “American Time Use Survey” conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, on average a teenager spends six minutes a day for pleasure reading. Daniel Willingham who wrote, “For the Love of Reading: Engaging Students in a Lifelong Pursuit,” discusses how educators can help motivate reluctant readers at school and home through the use of research-based practices; instead, of ignoring the problem or blaming digital technology as the culprit. Therefore, when students are motivate to read they will want to read for pleasure. Based on this article I am going to reflect on three main ideas I learned: why are students not reading for pleasure at school or home, how our practices of motivation through rewards may not be long-term effective …show more content…
Some people believe that reading has been displaced by digital technology. However, according to research: people don’t sit aside a lot of time for reading, technology is not taking over all the time, since reading never really had any time from the beginning. Therefore, Willingham (2015) conclusion is “most children don’t read, and even if digital devices aren’t directly absorbing time that might otherwise be devoted to reading, they might be making children expect instant gratification from leisure activities” (p. …show more content…
The Willingham 2015 suggest three ideas: offer parent workshops, provide books, and plant a seed. One thing a teacher can do is to educate the parents in ways to encourage and promote pleasure reading at home through a parent workshop. All parents want what is best for their child, they just need ways in execution. Reading at home needs to be primarily for pleasure reading. “Parents should support reading as a gateway to pleasure” (Willingham, 2015, p.11). According to research, when parents view reading as fun, their kids will read better. When the teacher offers workshops that work within the parents schedule the parents will then better equipped with ways to incorporate reading for pleasure at home.
The next suggestion for how teacher can promote and motivate reluctant readers is by offering books. A student is more likely to read a book if he/she has a book to read. This is a solution more focus during the summer months because this is when students may not have access to a library or bookstore. Based on research, free-book programs seem to benefit the low-income kids the
In the essay titled “How Teachers Make Children Hate Reading” written by John Holt and published in Reading for writers in 2013, Mr. Holt discusses why most children aren’t interested in reading. Mr. Holt spent fourteen years as an elementary school teacher. He believed classroom activities destroy a student’s learning ability. Mr. Holt never let his students say what they thought about a book. He wanted his students to look up every word they didn’t know. People can learn difficult words without looking them up in the dictionary.
On October 10th, 2017 at Springhurst Elementary School, I conducted a “Reading Interest Survey” and the “Elementary Reading Attitude Survey.” These surveys were conducted on a 1st grade student, Jax, to determine what his feelings are towards reading in different settings, what genres he prefers to read, and interests. It was found that Jax doesn’t mind reading, but prefers a few different topics. This was evident through his raw score of 30 on recreational reading, and a raw score of 31 on academic reading.
With such high numbers of adolescents falling below basic in reading, illiteracy is a battle that must be fought head on. The largest dilemma with the struggle is the number of variations that cause adolescents to become reluctant, unmotivated or struggling readers. Fortunately, a large number of strategies exist to encourage and strengthen readers of all ages, proving that adolescence is not a time to give up on faltering students. Rather, it is a time to evaluate and intervene in an effort to turn a reluctant reader into an avid one (or near enough). Ultimately, educators must learn to properly assess a student’s strengths and weaknesses (Curtis, 2009) and pair them with the proper intervention techniques. If one method does not work, countless others exist to take its place.
Pearson UK (n.d.) stated “Evidence suggests that children who read for enjoyment every day not only perform better in reading tests than those who don’t, but also develop a broader vocabulary, increased general knowledge and a better understanding of other cultures. In fact, reading for pleasure is more likely to determine whether a child does well at school than their social or economic background.”
The author provides several examples of how engrossed kids are in their devices. He gives a specific example that kids have a ridiculously large amount of screen time per day: around 295 minutes, which is almost five hours! Most children and teens responded by saying that the only reading they do is for school. 99 percent of eight to eighteen year olds that responded said that they have a television in their home and over 65 percent said that they have a television set in their own room. He provides a counterargument often presented by non-readers which states that screenplay provides all the intellectual skills that reading a
If you had the choice between your phone and a book,you would probably without thinking grab your phone. But what if you knew that reading is crucial to a future. In “Reading for pleasure Is in Painful Decline” by Stephen L. Carter and “Twilight of the books” by Caleb Crain, both authors argue about the state of reading in The United States. Within both passages they give valid points as to why and how the state of reading are negatively affecting the country. Stephen L. Carter represents how the decline in reading for fun is the main concern, while on the other hand, Caleb Crain shows it’s technology and social media that actually are the main contributors.
Some people believe that reading for pleasure is a waste of valuable time. They say that spending hours on a book is unproductive. Most people only read when it’s needed for school or for a job. Cynthia argues that reading may be the best possible use of time. She professes that we must read in order to make sound decisions. We must read to know about the scientific developments and ethical issues that impact our lives. She states, “Books shed a light that illuminates our problems and
Books are less common today than they were in the past. Fewer people read for pleasure now that technology is present. One study that shows that today, less than half of seventeen year olds read for pleasure more than once or twice a year. However, sixty-four percent of teens of the same age said they read at least once per week in the year 1984 (Alter). This only goes to show that technology is taking up more of people’s time for reading and other activities that were popular in the past. Overall, books are not as popular now as they once were.
After the study, results revealed that a lot of the influence regarding how they feel reading came from their years in college and high school. An example of a positive influential teacher gave their student a book to read. One of the negative instances were
I read voraciously as a child. I grew up in a college town and spent my summers in Middlebury, Vt, where my father taught summer school. That meant I was surrounded by libraries and by people who love to read and discuss literature. During the Vermont summers, one of my favorite places was Middlebury College's rare books room where I read first-edition Louisa May Alcott novels.
In Kouider Mohktari’s “The Impact of Internet and Television Use on the Reading Habits and Practices of College Students”, he and two other authors (Carla A. Reichard and Anne Gardner) briefly argue and discuss how technology (like television and the internet) affects how the American adult reads. They went further into the subject and decided to study the reading habits of college students in the education system of today. There haven’t been many studies on the habits of college students, which is one reason why Mokhtari decided to study it. The reading skills of Americans are decreasing as each year passes. While I am a very avid user of the internet, and I do watch quite a bit of television, I also spend a fair amount of time reading.
While I believe every child is a reader, I do not believe every child will be enthralled with reading all the time. All students have the capability to read and enjoy reading, but just like any other hobby, interest will vary from student to student. The students in my classroom will be encouraged in their reading, be provided with choice, taught how books can take you into another world but, my students will not be forced to read. This paper will illustrate my philosophy of reading through the theories I relate to, the way I want to implement reading and writing curriculum, and the methods I will use motivate my students to read and help them become literate.
Every child deserves a positive, safe, nurturing, and stimulating learning environment where they will grow academically, socially, emotionally, and physically. My role as an educator is to provide my students with this type of environment as well as an education that will help them succeed academically and become life long learners. It is the responsibility of a literacy educator to provide students with this type of environment, but also to provide instruction that will help students become successful readers and writers. There are numerous programs and philosophies about literacy and reading. Through years of experience and research, one begins to develop their own creative approach on teaching these skills. After looking at different programs and seeing the positive and negatives of each, an integrated and balanced approach of literacy seems to be the best way to teach the differing needs of each student.
Reading has been a part of my life from the second I was born. All throughout my childhood, my parents read to me, and I loved it. I grew up going to the library and being read to constantly. Especially in the years before Kindergarten, reading was my favorite thing to do. I grew up loving fairy tales and thriving on the knowledge that I could have any book I wanted, to be read to me that night. Having no siblings, my only examples were my parents, and they read constantly. Without a family that supported my love of reading throughout my childhood, I wouldn’t appreciate it nearly as much as I have and do now.
Literature has an enormous impact on a child’s development during the early years of his or her life. It is important for parents and teachers to instill a love of reading in children while they are still young and impressionable. They are very naive and trusting because they are just beginning to develop their own thoughts, so they will believe anything they read (Lesnik, 1998). This is why it is so important to give them literature that will have a positive impact. Literature can make children more loving, intelligent and open minded because reading books gives them a much wider perspective on the world. Through reading, children’s behavior can be changed, modified or extended, which is why books are so influential in children’s lives while they are young (Hunt, 1998). Literature has the power to affect many aspects of a child’s life and shapes their future adult life.