THE IMPORTANCE OF READING

by Michael Wilson, Principal

1) Reading does not stop with age. Just because your child is old enough to read alone, do not stop reading with them. Talking about the book and asking questions is vital for building comprehension skills, which they desperately need until their brains are ready to do this by themselves. Sending them off to read alone means you lose a lot of inquiry and connectivity with the child.

MEET NIBBLER!

We all made a new furry, fiendish friend this year in the form of Nibbler, the Prep Library Book Monster. There’s no epic adventure, no grizzly tale, no classic legend he doesn’t love to devour. Children can ‘feed’ Nibbler with donated, pre-loved books from home, so we can give to others less fortunate. They can also return their library books to Nibbler and he will magically place them back on the shelves for others to enjoy. So read for fun, read to inspire, read to feed Nibbler!

2) Reading is a bridge; it is a connection. Relationship ‘bridges’ become more critical once the child grows into a teenager and yearns for more independence. Having a love of books is a neutral conversational piece you can connect across.

3) Reading opens the mind to new ideas. Due to COVID-19, we retracted into our family units, becoming exposed to only a few viewpoints. Reading opens the door to more ideas. This is the biggest strength of reading. Learning to accept somebody else’s point of view, reasoning with multiple arguments, and understanding how you assimilate those arguments to create a perspective are vitally important skills. This is a crucial process in life.

4) Reading slows things down. We live in a fast-paced digital world, and teenagers often have too much information. They are bombarded with imagery and contradiction. At certain times of growth, they do not have the skills to assimilate that information into a clear thought, so they get confused with what they are thinking. What reading enables you to do, when your brain is completely relaxed, is take a point of view and think about it at your own pace, developing an idea.

““We are observing that the children who are reading for pleasure on a regular basis seem to be the children who score well in their exams and within their standardised tests. Because fundamentally, you are taking in information when you are in the most relaxed state when the brain is more absorbent.”

Michael Wilson, Principal

5) Reading is learning without knowing it. Reading unconsciously reinforces sentence structure, words, and spelling. It does not feel like work, as it happens by association when your brain is the most relaxed. So the key is not just getting children to read, but to get children to read because they love doing it. That is the critical element.