6 Tips for Stubborn Summer Readers
It’s that time of year. The birds are chirping. The teachers are packing up their classrooms. Trees and bushes are filling out, readying themselves for roles as home base or hiding place in epic hide-and-seek battles. The structure of your child’s day is beginning to look like a late-game Jenga tower: yawning with holes, and kept intact by some measure of force of will. Summer is the time of pick-up ball games, extended residencies in the pool, superhero movies, video game marathons, and trying to game as much ice cream as possible from parents.
But summer is ideal for reading, too. Try testing that notion out on children, and you’re apt to meet with some disapproval. You know the look when you see it. Shoulders down, eyes rolled up as far as they go. The look says: “my friends are off torturing lifeguards even now, and you want me to sit and look at words?”
At We Read Together, we know the struggle of converting reluctant readers. So here’s some ammo for the next time one of your little ones shoots that look.
- Re-brand reading.
With the school year fresh on their minds, some kids are going to see reading as an extension of school work – the same school work they battled through so that they could escape for several months. In this case, reading needs an image make-over. It needs to be seen as an activity that happy, sane people would gladly perform. Point out people reading in parks, older cousins with cool books, Daddy with the morning paper.
- Lead by example.
Why not use your child’s summer reading goals as a chance to dive back into it yourself? Find a new thriller or dust off an old classic. Talk about what you’re reading and why you can’t wait to get back to it. Even if your child has reached the age where Mommy and Daddy are no longer heroes to be followed around and ceaselessly copied, a household of readers is a very strong motivator.
- Create “reading time”
Make the time period after dinner into book time. For half an hour or an hour, or however long it lasts that particular day, try to get everyone in one room and reading their respective stories. Or, read together! Starting a book together can be a great parent-child activity. Pick up A Wrinkle in Time or a Harry Potter book, and read it aloud every day. Set the book where the words are visible to listeners. Whenever possible, use multiple copies or an iPad with Kindle software and a big screen. Take turns reading aloud. Once your child is wrapped up in a story, you’ll know it, and the hard part will be done.
- Bring the book outside!
No one says reading has to take place indoors. While it’s true that younger children may find the outdoors and all of its sensory stimuli distracting, as they get older, the idea of bringing a book to the beach will sound more and more like a decent idea. Encourage kids to sprawl out in the grass in the backyard, pull up a patio chair, or retreat to a treehouse.
- Get creative
Reading doesn’t have to be all about books. There are oodles of children’s magazines out there, and even more comic books. In fact, a trip to a comic book store enforcing the idea that comic books are considered good reading, too, may be all you need to develop an interested and self-sustained reader.
- Technology is not the enemy
While it’s frustrating to see half of a child’s day eaten up by video games and social media, it would take drastic and unrealistic measures to remove the influence of technology for any extended period of time. So use the internet to your advantage! Children are full of questions. When you find them to be interested in, say, marine life, and they begin to ask more questions about manatees than you have answers for, a perfect opportunity for a mini-assignment has arisen. Switch the roles on them; ask them to go look up their answer and tell you what they’ve learned. While you have them at the computer, ask some follow-up questions. Introducing children to Wikipedia, known in some circles as the Book of Knowledge, is good for reading and research skills and is a good start down the path of media literacy.
So go ahead, get your summer off to a good start with consistent reading. It’s the little things that count: a set time each day to read to each other, complimenting a child on their progress, letting your kids catch you reading Sports Illustrated instead of watching Sports Center. Summer habits if enforced well, can become year-long habits. For stubborn readers, keep the reading log going. Eventually it will be obsolete, as reading will be its own incentive.
Dylan Emmons is a writer, teacher, tutor, and consultant. He has a B.A. from Ithaca College and an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. While Dylan enjoyed learning, an early childhood diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome (a mild Autism Spectrum Disorder) meant that his success was never a given. However, along with some sensory and social difficulties, Dylan had very specific areas of skill and interest. He developed an unusually early and intense passion for reading and English language which then grew into a lifelong love of literature and afforded him many invaluable skills. Dylan was very fortunate to have patient, talented educators and mentors whose gracious assistance in the early years was crucial to any sort of a fulfilling life later on. In an effort to give back in a similar way, Dylan has taught creative writing to youth offenders in correctional facility and currently tutors at a community college.
Having both the enthusiasm for English education and the unique perspective of an individual with different needs, a major life goal of Dylan’s is to lend a hand to those who need and deserve specialized attention It is for this reason that Dylan became involved in We Read Together. As with autism, early intervention is key to creating future readers and masters of the English language. Dylan firmly believes that early exposure to reading and reading strategies does more than make reading easier or more manageable: it can enhance a student’s education and life in innumerable ways. This is especially true for underserved communities, where the development of such important skills is too often unavailable to the children who can benefit from and crave it. As a teacher with We Read Together, Dylan is proud to help guide bright young minds into the world of reading.