Changing the Perception
With the kids home from school, it’s been a hit-or-miss kind of workday. Still, I wanted to encourage you to join the conversation about ways we can get more parents involved in reading with their kids.
It all started with yesterday’s Literacy and Reading News Round-up and this Denver Post article with a very sobering statistic: fewer than half of American parents read with their children each day. Jen referenced the it in her link to our Round-up over at Jen Robinson’s Book Page, too.
After those posts went up, I added a poll with this question: How can we improve family reading? And Jen posed this question on her Facebook page yesterday:
What can be done to change the statistic that fewer than half of parents read to their children daily? Seriously, what can be done?
Both her Round-up post and her Facebook query have generated some interesting observations and ideas. This is a conversation that needs to get louder … and we’ would love to hear your ideas. How do we turn that statistic into something we can cheer about?
I just put up another post about this, too, Terry. One thing about your poll – it’s not clear if you’re looking for multiple responses, or for people to say what they think is the single best way to do this? I think it’s an important question either way, but making it more clear might increase the response.
Good point … I went through so many versions trying to understand how they work. I’ll update.
This is a soapbox topic with me and I have written a few snippets about using recorded books to encourage fluency development. While the first choice is, of course, to have the parent reading to the child, I’ve written that perhaps recorded stories in the van (instead of that infernal TV on the ceiling) are better than naught.
It’s not just the socio-economically disadvantaged that are not reading, it’s the run to soccer / ballet folks too.
The poll made me choose, so I went with the one I thought would have the greatest effect. I believe that there is no one answer to your question, and perhaps even no best answer.
But there may be many answers. I won’t pre-empt the poll by discussing it here, but I look forward to doing so in the near future.
Cheryl – I need to stop by and read your posts! I am *reading* my first audio book (The Thirteenth Tale), and as I’m trying to pay attention to the story I find myself thinking of all the ways they can help kids and families.
Susan – You’re right. It will take more than one tool to create the global impact we all want. If we can start with the top three, then we’ve got something. The biggest surprise (so far)? Despite some of the “let’s get the president involved” comments I’ve seen, no one has voted for the idea of him setting an example.