Help - how to get 8 year old to read

[ReadingRefusnik]

DS has always been something of a reading refusnik (hence user name). He won't read more than a couple of pages without complaining that he's utterly exhausted (and frankly, after a day at school, I think he often genuinely is exhausted). There's nothing to suggested an underlying cause like dyslexia - when he reads aloud, he can clearly do it okay, he just really, really doesn't like doing it. He loves being read to (we've just finished all of the Harry Potter books), and asks what to me at any rate seem like very interesting questions about the books as we go along (and even critiques the author's style and plotting!). His written English is also fine - his teacher showed me one of his stories recently because she was so pleased with how inventive it was. He just won't read.

I really thought we'd turned a corner at Christmas though, when he started reading Roald Dahl for pleasure and actually asked for them for his birthday. But now his school have introduced the "Accelerated Reader" scheme, and we're right back to square one - he absolutely hates the books (his example tonight of why they were so bad was that they seemed to him to be really badly written with one of his pet hates, "'I'm Bob,' said Bob" and similarly redundant pieces of padding, featuring in the prose). As well as that, being required to do online comprehension tests for everything he reads seems to be completely sucking the fun out of it for him. He's terrified the teacher, head teacher and deputy head will get cross with him for not doing it, and is terrified of being put onto the bottom table (which to be honest might be the best thing if it got him books that were short enough that they didn't scare him - except that they're likely to be even more boring than the ones he's got at the moment).

He's frankly terrified of the current one - 200 pages long, we've had it since Easter, he's made next to no progress, and just seems utterly overwhelmed. I don't know what to do. I'm going to see the teacher tomorrow, but I'm not sure how much that will achieve as his regular teacher (who is lovely) is on long term sick leave, and this is a supply teacher who doesn't really seem up to the job (going both off what my son tells me and what other parents have said - she simply can't control the class).

Does anyone have any suggestions?

I have been slow in returning, but you have had good advice already, and I will just add a bit more.

If he is interested in specific subjects, then non-fiction might attract him more than 'stories' - science, nature and wildlife, astronomy, sport, history and geography.

I also encourage what I call 'value added books' - that is stories that can be read conjuration with other materials, particularly maps:

For able readers, I always suggest Arthur Ransome - “Swallows and Amazons” being the first of a dozen or so books. The stories are quite exciting, with a good sense of 'place' and history; and you could learn to sail from them, too!

I particularly recommend “Coot Club”; set on the Norfolk Broads in the 1930s, it can be read in conjunction with the Ordnance Survey 2-1/2inch map of the Broads, as every place mentioned in the book is real, and even today, is there on the map; there are fewer railway lines and more main roads, but other than that little has changed.

“Watership Down” is another book set in a ‘real’ location, that can be easily found on maps, and on dedicated web sites. The housing development that destroys the rabbits’ original home, exists today on the outskirts of Newbury, Berkshire.

I'm sceptical about the benefits of accelerates reader as DDs teacher seems to rarely listen to her read since it was introduced this year. DD has also said she finds it difficult to remember all the finer details in the bok even though she has read and understood it perfectly well. Some of the quiz questions sound more like a memory test rather than a test of a child's understanding.

*book

The only fiction my DS will read willingly are stories revolving round Minecraft.

Hi All,, OP here (with a namechange fail - have mis-spelled my original name for this thread!)

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions. I thought I'd come and report back. A chance event moved things on a lot - my work had a "disability in the workplace" talk on dyslexia, and I realised that although DS wasn't showing the kind of classic "layperson's" idea of what the symptoms of dyslexia were (b and d muddled, text jumping around, that sort of thing), he seemed to tick a lot of the other boxes. So with the support of school (his teacher thought that there was something amiss too, because of a mismatch between his overall ability and interest and his poor perfomance in spelling and grammar in particular), we've just had him assessed by an educational psychologist, and he does turn out to be dyslexic.

It's a bit of a shock, but at the same time reassuring to know what's going on, to know he is a bright child, just one with specific learning difficulties, and to know there will be strategies we can put in place to try to support him.

Anyway, thanks again for all the support.