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School Zone: Maintaining literacy skills through the summer months
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Anonymous user Mon Jun 11, 2007 13:15:01 PDT
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0 responses 0 comments Summer.  A beautiful time to enjoy all that Bakersfield has to offer. Comfortable nights. Swimming weather that can’t be beat. The joy of a cool drink.  A good book.  Ahhh, if only all my eighth-grade kids came into class after a long summer having read loads of books. 
I look at the little athletes in my classes, taut and ready to juggle or hook shot that wad of paper into the garbage can across the room. It’s obvious they spend so much time practicing their sport of choice. If only they used the same discipline to practice reading!
Reading is like any other skill. Practice makes not perfect but better. The single best way to improve reading skills is, well, reading. The single best way to improve a person’s vocabulary is by reading.  Just as the best way to improve basketball skills is playing ball. The problem is, many kids don’t have passion for reading. 
The heartbreaking fact is that limited literacy skills cause 3,000 American students to drop out of high school every day, according to the National Council of Teachers of English. The organization states that sophisticated reading and writing skills are necessary for students to achieve in all content areas including math, science and social studies.
So how do we as parents and caregivers of children build literacy skills? My simple approach is this: read it only if you like it. Budding readers have to find something they do like to read.  As an educator and reading teacher, I insist that kids read anything that interests them. If it’s the box of cereal on the table, hooray! If it’s a magazine about motocross, yippee! If it’s an anime book that reads from right to left, go for it!
Parents need to seek out and find reading material that turns their kids on to reading. My own children reject what I think is the perfect book for them and grab something I would never recommend. But they are reading and that’s the ultimate goal. 
I had a struggling reader of my own. I can’t tell you how many books I read to my son Tommy. We started Louisa May Alcott’s “Little House on the Prairie” books when he was in first grade, followed by literally thousands of books through his school years. When he was a senior in high school I read Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” to him — it’s a difficult book and we kept a dictionary by our sides.  In the early grades he wasn’t reading independently but I turned him on to the power of what’s in books. 
As an adult in college he now reads 700-page science fiction books I would never consider picking up. But he has passion, and more importantly, the skills for reading.
If no one will read to a child, the alternate option is books on tape. Students often ask, “But isn’t that cheating?”  Nope.  Since the beginning of human communication, people have verbally shared their stories. 
The National Council of Teachers of English notes that “Audio broadcasts — whether radio presentations, podcasts or audio books — create an intimacy with listeners. Each listener creates mental images to accompany the words and sounds that are broadcast, allowing these broadcasts to create a one-to-one connection that no other medium can match.” 
It’s all about exposing children to the power of the written word.
Without a doubt, the single best free resource available to children is the Kern County Library. Every branch is conducting fabulous reading programs with prizes for the child who completes 10 books. Regardless of age, stop by branch, grab a sign up sheet, and get reading. Practice makes (nearly) perfect.

— Peggy Dewane-Pope is an eighth-grade English and reading teacher with the Panama-Buena Vista Union School District at Stonecreek Junior High School.

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