When students resist reading

It's interesting that a thread during the student-led family/educator conferences has been making time for reading. In busy households there is often not the time to simply sit down and read. Yet it's clear that students who read often, do better in school. Further studies now show that students who read live longer too--that should be evidence enough to find ways to support this worthwhile endeavor.

This year our team has made considerably more time for student reading. Fortunately due to systematic efforts spearheaded by a few passionated educators, students in our system read better than ever before. Almost every child reads at grade level or above by fifth grade. Our school is full of wonderful books and there's a great number of classroom educators who are also reading specialists. This is amazing and so much more positive than in the past.

As I think about this subject today, I am aware that children who resist reading find every excuse not to read during our "all stop and read" times in the day. So to work against that, I'll do the following:

• Ensure that we all stop and read for at least twenty minutes every day.
• Make time to study online books more since I've heard the research related to this is awesome and the fact that oral comprehension was recently listed as a top skill for success in the machine age.
• Slow down enough to incorporate this habit into my life too--I read a lot, but I don't always read a good fiction book for twenty minutes a night which would be advantageous to my life in so many ways.

There was a time way back when children would go home and read more. Life seemed to be a bit slower in those days and there seemed to be at least one parent at home more often in this area. Today with very busy home lives, I think we have to think deeply about how we make time for reading in our busy school lives--this is very important to the welfare of our children and our communities.