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Reading books at their own pace
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Help me work through this. I am torn. My 9yo dd is a voracious reader. Always has her nose in a book, whether required or free reading. I have a hard time keeping her “contained” in 1 or 2 chapters for her school readings, especially in history and books like Building Our Lives and such. She is always forgetting to stop because she’s so into the story. Which is great that she loves her books! But then she’s not digesting it slowly. But her narrations are still pretty good. She’s never had tons of minute details, even with the smallest of chunks of reading, but she knows what’s going on in the story and can tell me the plot and characters (and most of their names, or at least describe them enough so I know who she’s talking about), and sometimes she even does a near-quote of something someone said in the book. Personally, at her age, I am happy with that. She has started doing written narrations this year – 1 for science, 1 for history, for a total of 2 per week. I only require 3 sentences because writing is still difficult for her to get her words out on paper.
Based on her love of reading, and how many books I have sitting on her shelf to read, and how far “behind” we are this year with our nutty fall, I would love to just set her loose on her next book or 2 and “test” her narrations of the book as a whole when she’s done. If she’s not doing well with them, then I would definitely hold her back again. But do I dare? What do you all think?
If you’re ‘behind’ then I would skip a book or two instead of turning her loose, personally.
I have a voracious reader as well. We strike a deal. She may read any of ‘her’ books as fast or slow as she wants, but school books have to be read at the pace I set (1 chapter per day usually). To make it easy to remember to stop she moves her bookmark to the beginning of the next chapter when she opens the book (we usually use a post it note). When she reaches the bookmark shehas to put the book away and come narrate or do a written narration.
There are more reasons to reading a book slowly than just catching more details, (though that is a good one). When you limit yourself to one chapter per day or even per week then you give your imagination time to live with the characters and events that happened in the chapter, think about what may happen next (make predictions), and so on. A book of 20 chapters, which a fast reader could speed through in a day or a week takes four weeks or more at the slow pace. How much better will the child know and remember and live in the events of that book when they’ve thought about it, read it, and lived with it for a month versus a week? And if you read a chapter a week that book takes several months.
My younger dd loves to read too. She basically taught herself. I was so thrilled with this, at first. She flies through books but it’s hard to listen to her read aloud. She breezes over words she doesn’t know, I think she just likes the feeling of fluency.
So she reads aloud to me daily now, and we concentrate on reading every word, pausing at commas (she tends to ignore them).
I love that she loves reading. But shouldn’t I be worried that she is developing bad habits if I don’t reign her in a little?
My children have assigned reading from living books in history, science, poetry, and literature. Then they have their leisure reading (free reading) which are books read at the children’s own pace. These leisure books are generally still classics although some tend to be nonfiction and of special interest. For example, my daughter was assigned The Great Expectations for literature, but after being introduced to Charles Dickens, she read David Copperfield and Oliver Twist on her own time as leisure reading. My son is free reading through a stack of library fly fishing books right now. I use the SCM online planner so their reading is easy to categorize. I used to be tempted to log their leisure reading books in the literature category because they were of the same quality, until I realized that I wanted to keep them a bit more focused with a specific literature list for narrations. By the way, I was influenced greatly by the way Ambleside Online organizes their booklists for each level with books for assigned reading and free reading.
Thank you, all. I think that is why I was so torn. I want her to read, read, read all she wants, but I *KNOW* that’s not good for really getting the full effect of the reading! I may just take out a few books, after all. There are plenty to choose from. 🙂 Maybe move a few to her free reads since she is going through those so fast lately… Hey, now there’s a great idea! Ha! Thanks, everyone!
I’m in the minority around here, I know. But one of my daughters gets lost in a “school book”, I just let her. I want the line between “school books” and “fun books” to blur for them. My oldest is 9 though…as they grow, that may need to change.
I am in the same camp as Tia.
My goal is for them to view learning as a natural part of life, so the line between ‘school books’ and ‘free reading’ gets blurred a lot. I do require narrations on the school material, so that I know they are getting the material fully. But, as long as they are enjoying the learning and want to continue…I say let ’em go!
I should point out, however, that my 11 yo dd has about run out of books this way. It is difficult to buy a year’s worth of books for her, b/c she will read them all (even the history and science spines) in 3 months. I used to try to slow her down, but her narrations are excellent and her long term recall is very good, as well.
So, you know what? As long as she knows that she is going to hear or read the material again (if it is a family resource), I allow her to make that choice. I doubt she is being harmed by reading good books twice!
She is reaching the age when arts and crafts and horseback riding are taking a bigger part of her life, so I am grateful that she spent so much of her early life reading and developing her thought life.
Sometimes we spend a lot of energy trying to make our kids ‘balance’ their lives and forget that growth often comes in spurts of interest and activity. I think if we are providing them with a healthy diet of books AND things, with very little effort on our part, God uses it all to come ’round right eventually!
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