Cynthia Curry

Literacy Staff Developer
Stafford High School

860-684-4233, ext. 3147

"A good book is the purest essence of a human soul."
-Thomas Carlyle

The role of the literacy staff developer is to provide reading services across the curriculum. For example, the specialist may work individually with a struggling student, as well manage the reading support services provided at the school. The specialist may also train teachers on reading strategies for the classroom. You may contact a reading specialist with questions about your child's reading habits.

Top Ways to Get Your Kids to Read

Here are proven techniques you can use to teach your child that reading is valuable and enjoyable, and that promote reading for all children:

Set a good example as a reader - let kids see you reading every day.
Get a subscription in his or her name to an age-appropriate magazine for your child. When relatives and others ask for gift ideas, suggest magazine subscriptions, books, or a book store gift certificate.
Make reading fun - a time that you and your children look forward to spending together.

Show your kids that reading will introduce them to new people,
take them to faraway places, and let them travel through time. Start a family or neigborhood book group.

Sign up your kids (and yourself) for a book club.
Have your kids recommend their favorite books to friends and get their friends' recommendations.
Turn your kids into supersleuths. After they read a book, they can create an unbreakable, crazy code.
Be sneaky! Take our kids on a "book nick." It's kind of like a picnic, only better! (Pack some snacks and some books. On these trips, kids may prefer lighter reading fare, such as detective novels, short stories, magazines, or comic books. You can make a few suggestions, but let your readers choose what to bring along. If your kids enjoy reading on their own, bring books for them and one for yourself. Kids are more likely to grow up loving reading if they see you enjoying it, too)
Keep lots of books, magazines, and newspapers around the house. Visit the library often and shop for books at garage and yard sales, swap meets, and used bookstores.
Don't fret if "Captain Underpants" has captivated your child rather than Robinson Crusoe. The important thing: s/he's reading! Encourage it and he's likely to move on to more sophisticated titles as s/he gets older.

Tackling Tough Reading Assignments

Beowulf and Julius Caesar have not gotten easier to read with time. If your teen comes home with a daunting summer reading list or a tough assignment, here are a few things that might help:

Help your student map out a plan of attack. How long is the book? When must it be finished? Plot out how many pages must be covered per night. (Be flexible. Some kids do better with longer, less frequent reading sessions because they like to “get into” the book, rather than reading small pieces nightly.)
Check the library for audio recordings of a difficult book (she can listen and read along in her text). Movies or video versions of a book or play will also heighten understanding of the material. A good example is Shakespeare. Reading it and seeing it (even on video) are two totally different experiences, and the teen who sees it enacted has a far better chance of appreciating and remembering both the story and the characters than the teen who doesn't.
Some books really are exceptionally difficult; no 15-year-old should be expected to trudge through them alone. Look for study guides. Teachers don't want them used in place of the real text, but they most certainly don't mind a good guide being used to help explain what's going on.
If you're really motivated to help (and your teen doesn't mind), read the book at the same time your teen is. That way you can discuss it with her as she goes along.

Tuning In

Should you pay for good grades? In general, you want your teen to learn that good work is its own reward. That said, you might find other ways to reward improvement (not just achievement). Promise nothing in advance, but if your teen makes significant gains in a certain area (say, pulls his Biology grade from a C- to a B), consider staging some type of celebration that your teen would enjoy. He might like to be taken out to dinner or you might spring for coveted tickets to a hockey game, and the two of continues you can go to celebrate his improvement. If he showed noticeable improvement in a subject that was difficult for him, that's something worth setting off some fireworks about! Families who do pay for grades sometimes stipulate that the money earned goes into a college fund. This type of enforced savings certainly doesn't do any harm.

Five Tips for Parents of Reluctant Readers

Would your child rather clean up his room than pick up a book? These five tips from reading expert Marie Carbo can help you get your child back on the right reading track.

Make reading relaxing and low-key for a short part of the day.
Read aloud some funny or interesting parts of your favorite book.
Draw your child in with a riddle book for kids, a passage from Sports Illustrated, or a newspaper story.
If your kid likes a movie, see if it's based on a book, then bring home the book.
For kids who have lost the motivation to read, use material that's intensely interesting to them. Your child may almost have to disassociate what he's doing at school with the act of reading something for fun.

New This Month

Visit the following website to see the 2008 Teen Top 10 Books: www.ala.org/teenstopten

The WrestleMania Reading Challenge, sponsored by YALSA with support from World Wrestling Entertainment, is a program designed to encourage teens in grades 5-12 to not only continue their reading beyond Teen Read Week, but to earn a reward for doing so by offering chance to win prizes donated by WWE.Teen and tween participants can win a trip to WrestleMania 25 in Houston!

Librarians who registered can win $2,000 for their libraries.
http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/yalsa/teenreading/wrmc/wrmc2009.cfm