Promoting Reading as a Habit!

Promoting Reading as a Habit!!

Reading is fun.

Reading proficiency is the cornerstone of all academic learning.

A good Reader is a good Learner.

Reading is a gateway to knowledge and is one of the most pleasurable experiences.

Reading develops character.

Reading takes readers to places, far and near, cities and villages, rich and poor, America and Africa and obviously, where not.

Reading opens the doors to creative imagination and supplies wings to explore the self.

All said and done; the big question remains - how to develop the Reading Habit? While acquiring reading skill is an easy task, inculcating the reading habit is the most challenging task today because so much information from various media is competing for children’s attention.

During my journey as an educationist and educator, getting ample opportunities to have interactions with parents of various age groups, I concluded that majority of the parents today nurture one or the other myth regarding reading habit. So before we discuss the tips to promote reading habits, I must make efforts to dispel the myths about reading.

Myth No. 1.

Reading skill and reading habit mean the same thing.

Initially when parents are young and children are beginning to attend school, the parents have this notion that reading skill is reading habit. To make the things clearer, reading skill is the ability to read, while reading habit is the interest and choice to keep reading without any explicit demand to read.

Myth No. 2.

Reading habits develop on their own.

The biggest myth nurtured in the minds of the young parents is that since children are able to read they will automatically develop reading habits. No.. just wait, as young kids after being exposed to reading and writing skills are given regular practice to master them, the same applies to reading habit also. Reading habit has to be consciously set in.

Myth No. 3.

As children grow, reading habit will develop.

The truth as the research says is- probability of developing reading habit is more if kids are exposed to books earlier in life when they don’t consider it as an academic activity, associated with school. So, catch them young. The children must be exposed to the books as early as about two years of age. Along with toys and blocks, colourful, hard bound, small picture books must be a part of children’s play baskets. These books must depict one picture on one page in clear and crisp terms. Small books are handy and one clear picture conveys the concept clearly to develop interest.

Myth No. 4.

It is the duty of the school to help children develop reading habit.

Another myth nurtured by parents is that since they are sending their children to good schools and paying good fees, it is their duty to help children develop reading habit. Though it may be correct to some extent in senior classes yet they have to understand that the parents play the most important role when it comes to inculcating reading habit. The habit must be settled early in life when children are modeling their parents.

Myth No. 5.

Reading as a habit can be afforded only by rich people.

Another myth to be busted is that reading as a habit can be promoted only by rich parents. Though it may be partially true in pre-schooling age when reading as a habit is to be introduced by providing real material but later as the child grows, online world caters to this need on minimal cost.

Having busted the myths, there are few tips which definitely can help develop the reading habits in children. In order to make it simple, let us expand READ as:

                            R- Ritual
                            E- Ease of Access
                            A- Ambience
                            D- Dialogue

1. Make it a Ritual: A ritual is any well established practice at home. Make reading a daily routine. In fact, for reading as a lifelong habit to be settled in the minds of young children they must see their parents also reading regularly. For this to happen, first of all, the concept of Reading Time must take shape in family, wherein everyone at home must read at a specific time devoted to reading, like reading before bed time, reading in the afternoon or whatever convenient time at hand. This concept of Reading Time ultimately gets settled as a reading ritual.

2. Make books Easily Accessible: Let books be easily accessible to the children. Stack them in a place that they can reach out and pick whenever they wish to. In the zeal to keep the house very orderly, just do not make them disappear out of sight. Let them be available at side stools, play baskets, centre table or lobby.

Second important factor is that the age appropriate material must be accessible. As children grow, their reading interests change. It is important that content and authors suited to their age are introduced to sustain their interest in reading. *(more on this is shared below)

3. Ambience: The literal meaning of the word ambience means a particular environment or surrounding influence. In the case of developing reading as a habit, I am using it to convey the atmosphere of excitement, regarding books, created by parents at home. They talk high of books, discuss with each other, exchange books as gifts excitedly, and lend and borrow books. The children are taken to city library, book events are visited. Awards and rewards, at times, are in the form of new book on the reading list.  When the children regularly watch their parents drawing pleasure out of books, the habit catches on.

4. Dialogue: Reading must be followed by dialogue. Make it a habit to talk and discuss on the content which is made available to the children. Talk about the story line, plot, to discover something new; science facts, history, philosophy or mythology. Talk about the how and why along with what of the plot and character. Which character they liked and why? Given a choice, which character they would love to follow or do they visualize a different ending to the story? Do this with an intention of involvement and building further on their understanding and not at all to test their memory.

Remember to share something out of your reading list too.

Practicing the READ of reading habit from the very beginning will definitely help parents settle reading as a habit in the young children. The next big challenge for a parent is to keep the interest in reading sustained over years. For that they must simply try to choose age appropriate material. I am sharing few basics of how to do that. The children grow through various phases of interest as is told by Schliebe-Lippert and A. Beinlich^[1] through their research work.

Choose Age Appropriate Material meeting their Interest, Reading and Understanding Level:

For the beginners (From 2 to 6 years)

• This is the age for picture books and rhymes.

• The content must be more of pictures from the child’s environment and few words with big font size.

• The sentence structure must be simple and usually small.

• Sing and recite a number of nursery rhymes, language makes no difference. The idea is to make children curious towards the words, sounds and rhythms.

• Suggested Books: Picture books and rhymes books.

• Suggested Authors: Eric Carle, Maurice Sendak, Hans Christian Anderson etc.

For the Children into Primary Classes (From 6 to 9-10 years)

• This is the age for Fairy Tales and animals as characters.

• The content must have relatively lesser but detailed pictures and more of reading content.

• The font size must be medium.

• As the children grow and their vocabulary also increases, the sentence structure must transform into a little complex.

• Content must have short fanciful stories, talking animals, fairies and other mythical creatures. For Example; Amar Chitra Katha Collection by Anant Pai, Panchtatra Tales by Vishnu Sharma, Aesop’s Fables etc.

• Suggested Authors: Maurice Sendak, Hans Christian Andersen, Dr. Seuss, Vishnu Sharma, Anant Pai etc.

For the Children into Upper Primary and Middle Classes (From 9 to 12 years)

• This is the Environmental Story Age.

• The children are now big enough to keep themselves in the environmental context.

• The content may have some illustrations, regular font size and regular sentence structure with age appropriate vocabulary (usually picked up from their environment).

• The children now start preferring lively adventurous action, human characters, home and school life, romantic love, sentiments, animals, humour, courage, mystery, super naturalism and patriotism.

• Suggested Authors: Ruskin Bond, Subhadra Sen Gupta, R.K. Narayan, Sudha Murthy, Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, Raold Dahl, Enid Blyton, Lewis Caroll, Manjul Bajaj, Natasha Sharma etc.

For the Children into Upper Middle Classes (From 12 to 14-15 years)

• This is the age of Adventure.

• The children now prefer books of general interest, like adventurous books, short sensational novels, travel books and trash and cheap sentimental stories as well.

• Suggested Authors: Arup Kumar Dutta, Anu Kumar, Ranjit Lal, Paro Anand, Asha Nehemiah, Enid Blyton, Raold Dahl, Mark Twain, Judy Blume, J.K. Rowling, Louisa May Alcott etc.

For the Young Adults (From 14-15 to 17-18 years)

• These are the years of maturity.

• Since young adults are growing on all their faculties and self values are being formed, they start focusing not only on plot and form but on philosophy and values as well.

• Their reading interests now shift to adventure with more intellectual content. Travel books, biographies, engaging literature, historical novels, topical subjects and factual material is preferred and read with interest.

• Suggested Authors: I believe, by now if the children have cultivated the habit of reading, they are able to make right choices based on their interests. And an online world makes it even simpler for them.

I believe, having all the myths busted and empowered with the knowledge of age appropriate content, most parents specially the young parents, now find themselves equipped to help their children inculcate reading as a habit and are willing to practice READ…

Finally, parents must remember that all these suggestions are not a onetime shot remedy. Inculcating correct values and habits is a process which must go on regularly. Parents are great role models, they have to take the lead. As far as reading as a habit is concerned, parents’ role is just to get the habits shaped and monitor the content up to a certain age. After that reading will do on its own what it is supposed to do.. develop a human being.

Happy Reading!!

- Anju Arora

^[1]Schliebe- Lippert and A. Beinlichin as cited in paper titled Promoting the Reading Habit by Richard Bamberger for Unesco.

Disclaimer: Though full care has been taken by the author of this blog to put appropriate books and authors in correct categories; yet certain categories may overlap. The parents must use their discretion while choosing any book. The author cannot be held responsible for errors of omission.