Types of Reluctant Readers

There are different types of reluctant readers. Do any of these sound familiar?

• Over-scheduled kids with too many activities
• The kids who say they can't find interesting content (especially boys)
• Those who struggle with reading and, therefore, don't like to

Too many parents are keeping their kids and themselves way too busy. Pick a few quality activities to enjoy and schedule time for both silent reading and out loud reading.

My wife and I are working on solving this one. We are currently working on an on-line catalog for reluctant readers that will highlight some of the best books and series for kids of several age ranges. This service will make you aware of a lot of really neat books.

The secret for dealing with the third group is to provide chapter books with bigger print, short chapters that pull the readers through their stories, and supporting activities and games to provide related content that helps them get over short attention span challenges.

What the Polls Say

Last summer Scholastic Books released an independent study that explained why kids stopped reading so much from about the age of eight and onward. There were three reasons why:

• Parents, seeing that there kids could now read for themselves, ceased reading aloud to them.
• Parents were not letting their kids catch them with a good book. In other words, they were not modeling good reading habits.
• Content availability, especially for young boys, decreased by age group. The older the kids became, the less the reading choices were.

The fixes are simple:

• Make reading aloud to the family something that never stops. We read aloud to our teens and they loved it.
• Let your kids see that you read for enjoyment.
• Look harder for better content. Much of it is coming from the small, independent presses that don't have as much money to advertise as the big publishers do. Go to http://www.heartlandreviews.com to get some ideas as to what is out there. We specialize in finding the good stuff.

What questions do you have?