the parent of a child who is failing English...read?

[David Morris]

Go for task oriented reading: questions from specific texts. Reward correct
responses.

On Sunday, March 25, 2012, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
wrote:
> A dear friend, a scholar with young sons, confided that she could not
> get her boys to read for more than a few minutes. She feared that
> pushing the boys to read would cause them to read even less. I gave
> advice, but I knew that hooking kids on reading is a trial and error
> affair and that, like most else we do in education, the only rule that
> matters is, never give up on a child. A solid platitude if you need
> inspiration or are nearing burn-out or exhaustion, but not very
> helpful. Of course you won't give up on your reluctant reader. So how
> about some practical solutions? Well, cutting back on rich media use,
> like TV, Video games, computer use and so on may help, or may not help
> at all. In fact, some reluctant readers do quite a bit of reading when
> playing a game or when figuring out how to install a new game or how
> to use the cheat codes. Read yourself. Yes, this old standard seems
> obvious enough. But some kids resent and hate books because parents
> have their noses stuck in them and kids want the parent to move out of
> the book and into the back yard where a ball or the grass is calling.
> What you read and when may count for something. Maybe read something a
> kid can have fun with and see if this works. There is, as Dewey sez,
> "No educational Value in the Abstract." What works today may fail
> tomorrow. What works wonders with one child will be counterproductive
> with another. And so, we can never give up, but must be pragmatic and
> persevere. And one more thing, maybe your child won't be a big reader.
> Maybe she will decide to join the army and go to Iraq or Afghanistan.
> Is this such a bad thing in the end? Well, I've come to live with it
> and so can you.
>
>
>
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/why-teens-should-read-adult-fiction-and-vice-versa/article2371260/
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20120325/239a300d/attachment.html>