Reading is the key to life

I cannot over emphasise the value of parents reading to and with their children every day – no matter what their age. Reading is the key to life. It opens doors in ways we can only imagine. No other learning in any area can be accomplished without the ability to read. It is imperative that every child develops a love of reading and learns to read as voraciously as we can manage.

As educators, we ask you to read daily with your child – if you can only manage 10 minutes, then make it 10 minutes you sit with your child every day and read. (20 minutes is best, though.) If your child is continuing learning sight words, these too need to be visited daily. A child’s reading ability is only as good as the partnership between your child’s teacher and you. It really does take a village to raise a child. Your child’s teacher is teaching reading skills every day – it is the most important learning area there is. But these skills are worthless to your child is they are not reinforced at home with the time taken to sit with your child and read for the love of it.

It is all of our responsibilities to engage in our children’s education and to show them the value that is within. If we encourage daily reading, sight words, spelling, letter and sound recognition, then we will see progress in every child. 

Children are never too big or grown up to be read to. As adults you have access to more advanced concepts and comprehension and ways of reading than any primary aged child could ever achieve. Read aloud to your children every day. Talk through how you have comprehended the text, discuss the tricky vocabulary and grammar and how you figured it out, talk about other texts written by the same author – you will be amazed how fast and how much children learn from this – not just about reading, but about the world and it’s peoples in general.

Just try – commit to reading with/to your child for at least 10 minutes a day for the rest of the term and just watch the progress. Massive hand claps to those of you who already do!

What are we really on about?

Last week at our school leadership meeting we had a flurry of discussion about our 'targets' for 2015. It suddenly became important that everyone should know what the school's focus would be for 2015. Well, it's Reading... Writing... Numeracy... - of course it is. What else would we be putting our energies into?

So this little graphic began to be seen everywhere.

Peregian Springs State School

2015 whole school focus for every learner *Reading    *Writing    *Numeracy

We really want all kids to be successful readers and writers and to be numerate - research shows that if you can read and write, everything else is teachable. And more, if you can read and write to a high level, everything else is teachable AND you are ahead of the game. Readers and writers increase their life chances in terms of income, health, participation in political life, and longevity. So who wouldn't want that?

As the week wore on I was finding it hard to get excited about reading, writing and numeracy. I glossed over it at the P&C Meeting and also threw in the Department's mantra about attendance.
 

Peregian Springs State School

2015 whole school focus for every learner *Reading    *Writing    *Numeracy

Attendance

Of course, we need kids at school if we are going to help them be active participants in their own lives and in their communities. But it still wasn't doing it for me.

A huge part of learning is mental health and social and emotional literacy. So in went Student Wellbeing. 

Peregian Springs State School

2015 whole school focus for every learner *Reading    *Writing    *Numeracy

Attendance

Student Wellbeing

Hmmmmm....

Then it dawned on me that these are all results. They are admirable results, of course, but as an educator and a parent, I want more than results. I've often said over the last five and half years that I wanted to build a school kids and staff couldn't wait to get to every day.

Peregian Springs State School

2015 whole school focus for every learner *Reading    *Writing    *Numeracy

Attendance

Student Wellbeing

Happy kids and staff who can’t wait to get to school everyday

Knowing our kids and staff are happy - that's what gets me up everyday. This is what is exciting about 2015 - our sixth year. This is our 'target'. It's always been our target. And why is that?

It's because we all care deeply about the success of our students and our school. We've built a whole school team around this purpose, and it's what we strive for every day.
 

Peregian Springs State School

2015 whole school focus for every learner *Reading    *Writing    *Numeracy

Attendance

Student Wellbeing

Happy kids and staff who can’t wait to get to school everyday

Why? Because we care deeply about the success of our students and our school

The joy of listening to kids read

Not long after I started school as a little girl I was curled up in the book corner reading away when the Headmaster, Mr Evans, came into the classroom and said 'What's that silly girl doing over there pretending to read?'

I was four, and I still remember it - perhaps I need to get over now! I still remember being so angry that he thought I was pretending. I even remember the book I was reading - The Princess and the Pea from the Ladybird series. As a child I amassed many of these little hardcovers. I wish I still had them - they are worth a fortune now!

Anyway, back to Mr Evans - needless to say, he wasn't my inspiration to become a teacher - well, maybe he was. I think I knew then that kids deserve a lot better than that.

There is nothing I enjoy more than listening to kids read - any kid, at whatever level of development they are at. Reading is the key to the world and every time an adult listens to a child read and uses gentle timely interventions, they are helping the child cut another notch on that key.

I listened to couple of little girls in 3/2B the other day. They had picked a book for partner reading and were having the best fun. At the end of taking turns, using funny voices, flipping backwards and forwards through the pages, laughing at the funny parts and asking questions about the hard words I told them I thought they were amazing readers and I asked them how I would know that.

'Oh' they said 'We are fluency [sic], we use expression, we know what the words mean, and we can work stuff out - we comprend it.'

'Great,' I said. 'And how do I as the listener know you can understand what you are reading? That you comprend it, so to speak.'

'The voices we use and the funny bits we laugh at - if we weren't comprending we wouldn't know when to laugh or stop reading and think and stuff...' they said. Hmmm...

I was so glad they didn't say 'You know we are good readers because we are on Level J reading books'.

A child's reading level says nothing to a child about how they see themselves as a reader. A reading level is information for the teacher that helps guide instructional decisions. It is the result of a complex array of factors including decoding skills, voice control, fluency, expression, strategies used to make meaning, knowledge about punctuation and vocabulary, and much more.  It's not a competition nor a badge of honour. It's simply a tool teachers use to ensure children are reading at exactly the right level to continue to learn, to continue to make meaning. It's a way of making sure we don't expect children to jump to the top of a flight of stairs from half way down.

Because in the words of a couple of Year 2 girls, it's all about comprending it!