My Thoughts on Summer Reading

Although the majority of the comments we recieved with our Summer Reading survey were positive, there were some comments that really bothered me. Such as:

"My kids did all this work for these crappy prizes!";

"20 minutes a day is too much!";

"I'm too busy.";

"My kids are too young to read that much.";

"We were gone on vacation part of the time."

To begin with, the work your kids do is for their own benefit, not ours. Secondly, we did not dictate when (5 minutes here, 10 minutes there) or where (your child's brain does not take a vacation!) reading was to be done, and the point of summer reading is to keep kids reading and learning, not to provide them with prizes the library cannot afford. The dollar you paid in the beginning does not go for prizes nor are the prizes donated to the library. The money comes out of budgeting. One thing I particularly noticed was that the parents who were happy with the accomplishment of their children had children who were happy with whatever they received. Please take the time to read the following statistics provided by the U. S. Department of Education.

Why Your Child Should Read for 20 minutes Every Day

"WHY CAN'T I SKIP MY 20 MINUTES OF READING TONIGHT?"

LET'S FIGURE IT OUT --- MATHEMATICALLY!

Student A reads 20 minutes five nights of every week;

Student B reads only 4 minutes a night...or not at all!

Step 1: Multiply minutes a night x 5 times each week.

Student A reads 20 min. x 5 times a week = 100 mins./week

Student B reads 4 minutes x 5 times a week = 20 minutes

Step 2: Multiply minutes a week x 4 weeks each month.

Student A reads 400 minutes a month.

Student B reads 80 minutes a month.

Step 3: Multiply minutes a month x 9 months/school year

Student A reads 3600 min. in a school year.

Student B reads 720 min. in a school year.

Student A practices reading the equivalent of ten whole school days a year.

Student B gets the equivalent of only two school days of reading practice.
By the end of 6th grade if Student A and Student B maintain these same reading habits,

Student A will have read the equivalent of 60 whole school days

Student B will have read the equivalent of only 12 school days.

One would expect the gap of information retained will have widened considerably and so, undoubtedly, will school performance.

How do you think Student B will feel about him/herself as a student?

Some questions to ponder:

Which student would you expect to read better?
Which student would you expect to know more?
Which student would you expect to write better?
Which student would you expect to have a better vocabulary?
Which student would you expect to be more successful in school....and in life?

WHY READ 30 MINUTES A DAY?

*If daily reading begins in infancy, by the time the child is five years old, he or she has been fed roughly 900 hours of brain food!

*Reduce that experience to just 30 minutes a week, and the child's hungry mind lose 770 hours of nursery rhymes, fairy tales, and stories.

*A kindergarten student who has not been read aloud to could enter school with less than 60 hours of literacy nutrition. No teacher, no matter how talented, can make up for those lost hours of mental nourishment.

*Therefore...30 minutes daily = 900 hours

30 minutes weekly = 130 hours

Less than 30 minutes weekly = 60 hours

Guess you now understand why reading daily is so very important. Why not have family night reading? It is great to just shut off the television for 20-30 minutes and read... and share.

Now really, what do you expect for no money spent and what are you teaching your kids when they learn they should expect a lot for nothing. And just where do you expect the money for extravagant prizes comes from? connie