60,056 reading minutes in Mo-vember

You can't tell too well from this angle, but my beard now has several designs in it, including a V for Viking and P for PRIDE. Mr. LaTour's beard consists of two brown antlers and a bright red nose, designed by Mrs. Roberts and Mrs. Munson's classes, respectively. Roberts' class read 5277 after-school minutes in November and Munson's read 5021 minutes. All together, we had 22 of 42 classes participate in this event, reporting a total of 60,056 minutes read. If you were to figure out how many words this is, assuming that the kinder parents did most of the reading at this point in the year, these classes read over 5,000,000 words in Mo-vember. We'll be sporting these beards all day, even when I head to the district office this afternoon for my meeting with our Superintendent and Assnt. Sup.

Why put so much emphasis on reading? According to Hattie (2009)* exposing kids to reading has an overall effect of .63 on oral language and .41 on reading. Parent-preschooler joint book reading has a .67 effect on language growth, .58 effect on emergent literacy, and .55 effect on reading achievement. THIS WAS CONSISTENT ACROSS ALL SOCIOECONOMIC GROUPS. (sorry for yelling, it's just really important!) Reading with your kiddos trumps so many other environmental issues that hinder learning. 

Once we get students to read, and maybe even like reading, we can instruct them. Visual perception programs (the process of organizing and interpreting letters on a page) = .55. Vocabulary programs = .67. Phonics instruction = .60 with an overall effect size on phonological outcomes of .86, reading outcomes of .53 and spelling of .59. Repeated reading, re-reading a short and meaningful passage until reading a satisfactory fluency level = .67.

Do I need to continue? Do you see the importance? Do you see why we are willing to look so silly in the name of reading?

*Reminder: Hattie's research identified a .40 effect size as being equal to an average year's growth for a student. Anything greater than .40 is more than a year's academic growth. 

We can't give them what we don't have....

I know that sounds very Yogi Bera-esque, but let's dissect it for a bit. As parents, if we don't have it, we can't give it to our children. Simple. "No, you can't have candy because I don't have any candy." I don't have an extra car to give to my second teen driver (phew!!). There are lots of material things I can't give them because I just don't have it.

But there are things we cannot give our children because we never learned them, or never experienced them. There are times I struggle to help my kids with their homework because I never took that level of math class in high school. I can't give them that knowledge or support because I don't have it to give. "I can't"....remember my previous self-enabler post?

What are you not able to provide your children because you don't have it? Reading support? Help with their writing assignment? Conversations rich with academic vocabulary? Enlightening cultural experiences that include the arts, music, theater, travel?

I guess the bigger question is: What are you doing about it? Imagine the impact on your child's future if they know you struggle with reading, but see you putting forth the effort to become a better reader!! Imagine they see you taking courses or using an app on your phone to improve your English skills.

We owe it to our children to be an example of continuous learning. It's exhausting, I know. But if we want them to be better than us, we must never stop learning.

Can you imagine the impact of them walking into the living room and you have the TV off, and you aren't playing a video game or on the computer, and you are reading a book? 

Starting today my children will see me reading at least once a day. This will probably be a shocker to them. :)

But I don't want to be the reason my child says "I can't."