There is Nothing More Valuable to Your Child’s Growth as a Learner than “Just Reading.”

There is Nothing More Valuable to Your Child’s Growth as a Learner than “Just Reading.”

A few years ago, I was a participant on a panel with several principals about how to evaluate teachers.  The principal next to me spoke first, and among the many statements she made with which I disagreed was this one:  “I never want to walk into a classroom and see students just reading.”

At the Intergenerational Schools, it is required that teachers provide at least 30 minutes each and every day for students to just read.  This is called SSR, for Sustained Silent Reading.  In many schools and classrooms, students spend a lot of time filling out worksheets or doing reading “activities” but spend little if any time just reading. In my work as a teacher, principal and now Chief Educator, I like nothing better than to walk into a classroom and see every individual (teacher included) deeply engrossed in a book.  Each person is reading a “just right” book that he or she has chosen (independently or with teacher guidance).  We will never develop readers, if we never give students the opportunity to select and spend time reading beautiful, wonderful, engaging and mind-expanding books.

In her latest book Quantity and Quality:  Increasing the Volume and Complexity of Students’ Reading, Sandra Wilde states “establishing the reading of books as the center of our literacy curriculum is the secret to academic achievement.”  I could not agree more!  As with everything else in life, the more you practice reading, the better a reader you will be.

Becoming a reader does still require teaching.  It is the role of the teacher to demonstrate and help students practice a variety of reading strategies (including but not limited to phonetic ones), to introduce students to a wide variety of text types, and to help them expand their reading range and stamina.  It is also the role of the teacher to help students learn to love books!

The more children read, the larger their vocabulary, the more world knowledge they acquire, the better their writing, and the higher their scores on standardized tests.

Most of all, reading is a purely pleasurable activity.  Reading with a child enables you to laugh at silly characters together, cry over sad stories, visit wondrous places, and learn anything you want to learn!  There is nothing more valuable to your child’s growth as a learner than just reading.

Dr. Cathy Whitehouse is Co-Founder and Chief Educator for The Intergenerational Schools.