Why Read?

Reading will benefit our students more than anything else. Let's promote reading!

Bradbury hits so many homeruns in this short speech. Enjoy his wisdom and enthusiasm to get us all reading, curious and fired up to learn!

Reading is a research supported activity beneficial for student learning  a language or acquiring knowledge. However too often schools don’t support and promote reading programs because of many administrative and institutional pressures and traditions.

However, students NEED this vital activity and the time and support for it in-school. Outsourcing it as homework or “recommended” reading/study has been shown to almost never work.

Reading we know works when several things are in place:

1. There is student choice. Students read what they want and are interested in.

2. Students read text that is at their right level. 90 -98% of the words on a page should be understood. If in doubt, get students using the five finger rule. When reading a page of text, students count on their fingers each word they don’t understand/know. If 5 fingers are raised for the page - it’s too difficult.

3. The teacher supports student reading and models reading in class.

Here is a nice reading list we put together for teachers interested in the power of reading. Many of the articles support an extensive reading approach, giving students choice. Using a FVR (free, voluntary reading) program will bring your students much English language learning success (and loads of transfer into their L1).

Let’s get our students reading!

[On another note - year subscribers to our Lesson Library get a link to 1,000s of PPTx leveled readers. Great content for instruction or student reading]

Reading List

• Learning to Read to Learn | Harvard Graduate School of Education

• Reading Is a Form of Nutrition for the Mind — WSJ

• How to Help Students Develop a Love of Reading | MindShift | KQED News

• Russ on Reading: Independent Reading: A Research Based Defense

• The Input Hypothesis with Dr. Stephen Krashen

• How to Help Students Develop a Love of Reading | MindShift | KQED News

• Educators say acquiring language skills key to becoming global citizens

• If we stop telling kids what to read, they might start reading again — The Washington Post

• How a School Library Increased Student Use by 1,000 Percent | Cult of Pedagogy

• Is listening to a book ‘cheating?’ — The Washington Post

• Do You Assign Enough Reading? Or Too Much? — The Chronicle of Higher Education

• Extensive reading: why it is good for our students… and for us. | TeachingEnglish | British Council | BBC

• http://erfoundation.org/ERF_Guide.pdf

• The Reading Rules We Would Never Follow as Adult Readers

  

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