Angel Post #6

My Explorations project was set among projects with similar topics. There were a great number of discussions centering around reluctant reading. The topics that came about because of my project were quite interesting. I enjoyed discussing with my classmates their reading experiences and learning from them. I especially enjoyed this post because of all the stories shared.

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Melissa's Unreached Readers
MOALA, MARIAH
5/18/2011

I thought it was really interesting how you incoporated your mom and her reading tendencies in your project. What I've seen a lot in the class was about children's reading developement being affected by their parents, if the parents don't read the children won't or visa versa, but with you your mother didn't read while you were growing and up and love to read! This interests me because it's a kind of break in the statistic that children don't always have to follow their parents tendencies.

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Melissa's Unreached Readers
HAMILTON, HANNAH
5/22/2011

I think that you made a wonderful point when you talked about you loving to read and your parents did not. I too am in the same boat, i love to read, i cannot put a book down for my life, yet my mother hates reading and my father wouldn't touch a book with a ten foot pole. Reluctant reading is something that i have always pondered, i love to read and always have so i can't imagine why people dislike it. Your report gave me a better idea as to why, rather that 'its not cool'. You did a wonderful job, very informative!

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RE: Melissa's Unreached Readers
Winans, Sherri
5/19/2011

Hi, Mariah. Great observation about Melissa's situation: helping get her mom into reading. This was my experience, too (Mom didn't read), and yes it's different from what some of the studies show. In my home, we didn't read, didn't really have many books, but my grandma read to us, and I suppose she's the one who got me into it. Her dad read, she said.... But really not much reading in my family at all, and here I am reading a book a week and teaching children's lit.... You never can tell.
Sherri

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RE: RE: Melissa's Unreached Readers
PEACOCK, MELISSA
5/22/2011

Thanks for your thoughts, Mariah. Yep, it is a bit strange that I didn't come from reading parents but am such a reader today (like Sherri, I read at least a book a week). I had a few advatages outside of this, though. I had a few great teachers who really fostered my love for reading. They taught me that reading can be interesting and can feed curiosity. Also, we lived less than a block away from our library. My dad took my sister and I to the library every week night to keep us from being in mom's way when she was making dinner. A great deal of my memories are in that library. I grew to love reading and research from those times.
I am thankful that I am an anomaly in becoming a reader from non-reading parents!

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RE: RE: Melissa's Unreached Readers
ROBERTS, ABIGAIL
5/21/2011

It is always going to be hard to pin point the children that will never "take" to reading because I think all people have a natural curiosity. This includes books, stories, comics, journals, newspapers, online writing sources, basically anything. I think that promoting curiosity can be really crucial to instill as well as a love for reading.

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RE: RE: RE: Melissa's Unreached Readers
NIGRETTO, ALEXA
5/22/2011

I love that you mentioned "curiosity." I know that as a reader now its usually curiosity that gets me involved in a particular book.