To not expect my almost 6 year old DD to read over summer hols

[Whisperingwinds]

So DD is almost 6 - Sept child and will be moving into year 1. she finfished reception in tne top reading group and her teacher recommended that we ensure she reads atleast a bit everyday so she doesn't forget everything when school restarts.

DH and I both work full time so she is summer camps most week days from 9 to 6 - by the time she is home, she is shattered and just wants to watch TV and sleep. She is in bed by 7:30.

It has been a complete struggle getting her to read and has on,y lead to frustration. So AIBU to just let it go over summer and just let her be? We are off on hols for two weeks in a weeks time and am thinking of taking books and trying then when we are all relaxed and don't have any time constraints like we would on a working day. I want her to love reading and am worried me making a chore might push her the other way.

I just heard back from the Literacy Trust as well; they have drawn attention to the following. I completely agree; fostering an intrinsic love of reading is the key and this can be done during holidays and term time :)

'Reading over the summer holidays is important but some previous research suggests that extrinsic motivation might not be beneficial for reading:

Park (2011) : a moderate level of extrinsic motivation had a positive effect on reading performance but only when students had at least a medium level of intrinsic motivation as well.

Wang and Guthrie (2004) extrinsic motivation predicted text comprehension negatively, except when associated with intrinsic motivation.

Therefore, rewards and punishment (or indeed making reading a chore) is not the best idea.

Instead, it might be more beneficial to support reading interest and make reading (not only books) available.

Parental support leads to more voluntary reading (Baker, 2003)

PISA results (OECD, 2012): some types of parental involvement in early primary school are strongly associated with reading performance and even more with instilling a sense of enjoyment of reading in children. These types of parental involvement emphasise the value of reading and words in context rather than treating words isolated from their context (OECD, 2012).' Literacy Trust

Reading is more important than watching tv.

Reading should be ingrained in the culture of your household as much as TV is. Everybody should have reading time even if it's just a newspaper or a magazine. If you don't read as a family then you have to make your child do it, to overcome the deficiency. No point complaining about it.

At the weekend when you are out and about can you encourage her to read signs or notices?

Yes reading should be encouraged, but I disagree it should be forced on a reluctant child. Find ways she likes instead, magazines, websites, choosing her own books.

Having time to relax after a day at summer camp is important, whether that's through tv or books or sleep or trampolines or whatever she wants. She's bloody 5 ffs.

Just read to her, it's fine. Never force a child to read who loves reading IMO!

Italiangreyhound - Based on 11 years of experience.

As for those asking how to make your child. I've no idea. I've never had a child I've taught refuse to read. However, I've had refusers for other things and the thing that works is 'You've two choices. Do this now or do it at x (an inconvient time). However I'd try the nice route first e.g. trips to the library, magazines if they find books too much, book shops, creating a book nook etc. Mind you, if it was my child they'd be reading whether it was the easy way or the hard way. Readers do better across all subjects in my experience. Too important not to read.

I do think the middle classes fetishise reading a bit though, and I was a title bookworm as a kid dsis basically never read, but she's the one with a Cambridge doctorate and all sorts of wholesome pursuits like wild camping and allotment growing, whereas I am more of a cvouch potato. I'm not sure it is worthy of such idolisation over other interests /maths/scienceetc

Waitingforlife I think that's a destructive approach and I can see that being a massive hit with my dyslexic ds - "Read! Damn you!"
Still intrigued by this one min a day thing - did you have children/pupils who read for a min a day, and you compared them to others who didn't read?

My Ds is a year on from your DD. He was at stage 6 this time last year too. I struggled to get him to read non school books in the hols last year although he liked looking at non fiction and did read bits of books he was interested in. We did do the library challenge but with a lot of me reading to him. It was like he wasnt sure if he could read books unless the school had given them to him. This year he has lapped up the library challenge and is reading so much to himself. He has a book in bed at night and if he's too tired he doesn't read but if he has the energy he will read and read.

I would say have some books available at the weekends but dont worry if she's too tired. A book a day seems ridiculous btw!

waitingforlifetostart "Italiangreyhound - Based on 11 years of experience." Of teaching kids who did and did not read for a minute a day and collating the results?

longestlurkerever very interesting post.

Sorry should have finished with - Reading to her is far more important imo

italiangreyhound - Over the years I've had some children reluctant to read at home so I've introduced a reward based scheme. My experience is based on their progress when they go from reading very infrequently at home to reading a couple of pages a night (approx 1 minute). This progress is easily trackable through improved reading ages to improved test scores but is most obvious through improved fluency when reading with them in class.

And I do think reading to them is great and helps create a love of literature. However a mixture of both them reading and you reading to them is better. Imagine an athlete. They don't get better by just watching experts on the TV. They have to put in the training too.

When my DD got to the end of reception year she was exhausted. That summer term, I struggled to get her to read a couple of pages of her reading book every night, and she was tired and gave up quickly. I let her gave a complete break over the summer - I read to her, but didn't make her read anything - then she went back in September refreshed and raced through the books she had been struggling with.

Reading is so so important, 10 minutes at bedtime is doable for everyone I would have thought.

DSs' teachers always said that it took children a few weeks to get back up to standard after the summer holidays. The handwriting, the reading, remembering what they've been taught. 6 weeks is a long time out of education at that age. And that you can tell which children have maintained the reading practice.

And apart from that, bedtime reading is lovely for children; that uninterrupted calm time which helps them nod off.

Having dissed reading above, I should confess that I have loved reading Enid blyton with dd this holiday. We are off to the famous five celebration at Wisley on Friday and although it's a pita that she stays up till all hours reading the secret seven, I do love that she loves it. But there are other things in life and I don't really see why a love for something else isn't just as valuable. Dsis was always out playing football while I read and she had a more sociable childhood than me too. Our school is in a v middle class area and the reading scores are streets ahead of the national average whereas maths and science are mediocre. I don't really get why no one is up in arms that kids aren't doing maths every day - it just gets a token mention now and again.

longestlurker - For me it's because reading impacts on every subject. You can't even access the curriculum without it. Maths impacts on a few subjects but not everything. Also far fewer people will need high level maths skills for their working life than reading. Just my opinion of course.

Well obviously everyone needs to be able to read. That's not what I mean. I mean the obsession with reading levels and reading age and and instilling a love of literature at age 5. It's all very well but it's a weirdly narrow way at measuring education, and parental engagement in education.

It would be brilliant for the country if people had an innate sense of maths and logic - if they understood the use and limitations of evidence and data and stats and analysis and were comfortable using them in their jobs and day to day decisions. I have a literature and humanities background but need these skills just as much in my work (lawyer) as reading comprehension.

Sorry for disappearing- been nursing a horrid cold! Some really interesting posts here.

We have now started reading a book together in the bus and us reading alternate pages/characters definitely has her reading without protest.

OP. Glad it's going better with reading on the bus and that the library scheme might enthuse your DD. Like you DH and I were both intuitive bookworms and scholars but bred DC who weren't - it just goes that way sometimes. Books were always around and we never pushed it and now they're good readers.

One PP - a teacher - posted it wasn't mandatory and that kids can do reading/numbers/geography in daily life which is great and you're fitting it in on the bus and will have two weeks to relax with your DD.

Good luck - she's very young.

I think you have to know when to push it and when to not. My DD1 was a very reluctant reader until well over 8, we had years of me trying to get her to read everyday, I wish I had been more laid back about it when she was 5/6.

She did not start reading properly until she was nearly 7, it was like pulling teeth. She finally started reading for fun at 8.5 and now reads every night before bed. Despite her slow start she is one of the strongest readers in her class.

But literacy is not just reading a book, it is being read to and writing practice and noticing signs/words in day to day life or playing board games or role play etc there are many ways to encourage literacy rather than reading the set book from school. Even though my DD did not always read as much as others when she was 6/7 she still had these other literacy influences in her daily life.