Yep, you heard me…now drop what you are doing, have your child drop what he is doing and pick up that book! Read, read, read! One sure way to get your child to read is to be a reader yourself. Showing your child that you love reading may spark his interest in it, give it a try and see what happens.
When I was teaching we had something called DEAR time everyday for 15 minutes. DEAR stands for Drop Everything And Read, which is exactly what we did, daily! I can’t stress enough how important it is to make time for reading everyday and I made sure we did in my classroom.
I had a class full of special education students reading everyday. I really didn’t care what they were reading, it could be a comic book, a magazine, Moby Dick or the Bible, it didn’t matter. What mattered was that they were reading, everyday!
Sure, most of my students were reluctant readers to say the least and most of them were on average three grade levels behind their peers when it came to academics, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that they saw me pick up a book everyday at 2:20 and read. They knew they had to do the same, and eventually they learned to love that quiet time in our classroom. It got to the point where they couldn’t wait to go check out books from our media center so that they could have something new to read for DEAR time that day.
There are studies that show children who see reading happen in their homes or by other adults are often better readers and often will read more on their own. So now you know DEAR it is time to instill a love of reading in your children. Pick up that book by dropping whatever you are doing and read!