Reading is an essential part of the growth of any person. John Holt in “How Teachers Make Children Hate Reading” goes over the various factors of how teachers make students despise reading, and alternatives teachers can try to get students more motivated (Holt). Anne Cunningham in her article “What Reading Does for The Mind” goes over how not reading at an early age, and not reading in general can cause serious cognitive damage in children, and adults (Cunningham). Both articles are focused on the same topic, reading and how it affects us, but take very different approaches in the formats they portray their arguments. Holt focuses on how teachers forcing students to read makes them hate it. Alternatively, he suggests teachers suggest reading
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Cunningham would agree with this approach based on the findings in Table 3 that shows students who read over over 20 minutes a day are exposed to 1.8 million new vocabulary words a year (Cunningham). Having a student read through a book, and look up any terms they are unfamiliar with, would help to build up their vocabularies. Having the children try and understand all of the concepts, words, and other pieces of information they read, is one of many solutions that could be implemented (Holt). Testing students on the items they have read, to make sure they understand what they are reading, is another piece of this puzzle (Holt). Personally for me this solution worked. I did not necessarily enjoy being forced to read, take a test, and pick out vocabulary terms, but it did help me learn new terms. This alternative doesn’t work for everyone though, because I noticed some people just won’t read if they are being forced to. I believe this is because it takes the fun out of reading when someone tells you to do …show more content…
Encouraging students to read in their free time as proven by John Holt, is effective, and will help them build extensive vocabularies they can use throughout their lives. Incorporating the fun activities, will allow them to associate reading with having fun, and will make them more inclined to read on their own. This solution would have worked best on me, because I read a lot anyways, and combined with this solution I know I would have read even more. I was not the only child who loved to do activities, and I feel that many would benefit from this
Cunningham would agree with this approach based on the findings in Table 3 that shows students who read over over 20 minutes a day are exposed to 1.8 million new vocabulary words a year (Cunningham). Having a student read through a book, and look up any terms they are unfamiliar with, would help to build up their vocabularies. Having the children try and understand all of the concepts, words, and other pieces of information they read, is one of many solutions that could be implemented (Holt). Testing students on the items they have read, to make sure they understand what they are reading, is another piece of this puzzle (Holt). Personally for me this solution worked. I did not necessarily enjoy being forced to read, take a test, and pick out vocabulary terms, but it did help me learn new terms. This alternative doesn’t work for everyone though, because I noticed some people just won’t read if they are being forced to. I believe this is because it takes the fun out of reading when someone tells you to do …show more content…
Encouraging students to read in their free time as proven by John Holt, is effective, and will help them build extensive vocabularies they can use throughout their lives. Incorporating the fun activities, will allow them to associate reading with having fun, and will make them more inclined to read on their own. This solution would have worked best on me, because I read a lot anyways, and combined with this solution I know I would have read even more. I was not the only child who loved to do activities, and I feel that many would benefit from this