7 Ways to Encourage Your Child to Read This Summer

Donalyn Miller, author of The Book Whisperer and sixth-grade Language Arts teacher, requires her students to read forty books during the course of the school year. Forty books! At first, this may seem like an overly-optimistic goal for sixth-graders. Miller assures us that not only is the requirement attainable, but that her students often read more than forty books in a school year while also scoring higher on state-mandated achievement tests.

Upon further reflection, reading forty books in a school year is hardly implausible. Given a traditional nine-month school calendar, these students are reading about one book a week. While Miller's The Book Whisperer is written primarily for teachers, her efforts and suggestions can be readily adopted by parents throughout the entire year. Why not make reading one book a week a priority at home, as well?

Here are tips for parents to help your children meet a One-Book-A-Week reading challenge.

Make books available. If you live in a district in which a part of your taxes goes toward the maintenance of a public library and you're not utilizing its services...well, that's just money thrown away. If your community does not offer a public library (as is the case in many rural areas), then a neighboring community will. You will be able to pay a small annual fee to use the library. Make a weekly trip to the library an event in your house.

Let your child pick the book. Any book. Comics, graphic novels, or stories based on video games are all popular with children, and while these books may not seem "educational," they are valuable in teaching your child to enjoy reading. No person begins as a sophisticated reader. We all start with picture books and simple stories, and unfortunately, many adult readers stop at this level, reading only the daily newspaper or flipping through a magazine in a waiting room. Letting your child pick her reading material puts her in charge of her own reading choices and also clues you in to her reading level. By the time kids learn that reading is enjoyable, they've become more discerning readers, choosing books about new subjects and unfamiliar themes. As the weeks go by and your children are learning to enjoy reading, entice them with more advanced reading material.

Read with them. Read some of the same books your children are reading. Children's books are some of the most enjoyable literature available today. They are shorter and more quickly read than some mainstream adult novels, and most have themes that adults will enjoy. You can either read different copies of the same book and discuss it afterward, or spend time together reading aloud from the same copy. Books aren't just for reading and tossing aside. They're for discussing, dissecting, praising, and arguing over. When you are reading the same books as your children, you are creating a whole new level on which to connect with them.

Let them abandon books they don't like. Teach your children that it's okay to stop reading a book they don't enjoy. During your weekly trip to the library, make sure your children pick out at least three or four books for the week. If they don't like one, they simply drop it and try another. If they are reading one book a week, but they have another three or four at their disposal, they will not only have a choice in their reading material that week, but they will have ideas for future reading, or may even decide to go ahead and read all of them that week!

Don't "quiz" them about the book. Can you imagine the sharp decline in your own reading if someone required you to take a test after every newspaper, magazine, or latest bestseller you read? Again, the point here is to teach reading as an enjoyable activity. As soon as you make reading a task or a test, children will resist (as will adults!). Discussing the books with your children will be enough to let you know if they are reading with understanding and comprehension.

Keep track of the books they read. Keep a list of all the books you have read together. Not only will you need a list to refer to when you forget which books you've read, but as that list grows, your children will know a sense of accomplishment and encouragement to keep going.

Be flexible. The first goal of independent reading is to show children that reading is to be enjoyed. If your child is struggling with one book a week and not enjoying the process, let up a little. Or if he has decided to read a longer or more advanced book, he will obviously need more time to complete it. The One-Book-A-Week challenge is just that, a fun challenge, a goal to which your kids can aspire, not a task for them to resent. If you set a goal for one book a week, and your child only read two this month? That's two books your child read! Celebrate his accomplishments and encourage him to keep going.

Sources:

Miller, Donalyn. The Book Whisperer. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2009.

Additional Resources:

5 Classics Your Teenager Should Read This Summer
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1608415/five_classic_books_your_teenager_should.html?cat=4

2009 Summer Reading Lists at About.com
http://childrensbooks.about.com/od/forparents/tp/summer_reading.htm

American Library Association's Children's Notable Lists
http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/alsc/awardsgrants/childrensnotable/index.cfm

The Book Whisperer blog by Donalyn Miller
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/book_whisperer/