“If children are to become readers for life, they must first love stories”

Reading aloud is a huge part of our school day. We start each day with Bible reading and end each day reading stories in bed. Almost all our science and history “lessons” come through reading stories. (See my recommendations for grades K-3)

(Click here to see a sample multi-level teaching day)

We’ve been reading Rudyard Kipling’s stories. My boys, 6 and 8, are glued to my every word. I feel we have graduated because they don’t need pictures. We still enjoy picture books but they don’t need them. I tell them,”The pictures are in your head.”

I’m convinced my children learn how to read better from reading aloud than they do from phonic lessons. We still do phonics lessons and practice sight words but the reading aloud carries much more weight. Author Michael Morpurgo wrote an excellent article about reading that may cause you to view it in a new light.

We are in a muddle about literacy. We worry endlessly that children in Britain are not becoming readers. Report after report reveals that we are slipping further and further behind in child literacy levels when compared with other countries. Interesting that Finland finds itself at the top of a recent child happiness table as well as child literacy levels. More of Finland and happiness later.

I’m thinking that education itself is in part to blame. Ironically, it may be responsible both for the great blossoming of our literature, and at the same time for leaving so many with the impression that literature is not for them, but the preserve of a certain educated elite. As a consequence, much of our society has become separated from its own stories. This alienation can happen all too easily. Let me tell you a story. Read the rest of this article here.

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