Teaching children to read opens up a world of possibilities for them. It builds their capacity for creative and critical thinking, expands their knowledge base, and develops their ability to respond with empathy and compassion to others. (International Literacy Association, 2018)
Reading Instruction is oriented towards: | Reading for Pleasure is oriented towards: |
---|---|
Learning to read | Choosing to read |
The skill | The will |
Decoding and comprehension | Engagement and response |
System readers | Lifelong readers |
Teacher direction | Child direction |
Teacher ownership | Child ownership |
Attainment | Achievement |
The minimum entitlement: the ‘expected standard’ | The maximum entitlement: a reader for life |
The standards agenda | The reader’s own agenda |
It can be summarised as understanding, using, evaluating, reflecting on and engaging with texts in order to achieve one’s goals, to develop one’s knowledge and potential, and to participate in society. (Mo, 2019, p. 2)
Children and young people who enjoy reading very much and who think positively about reading have, on average, higher mental wellbeing scores than their peers who don’t enjoy reading at all and who hold negative attitudes towards reading. (Clark and Teravainen-Goff, 2018, p. 2)
There should not be a hierarchical ranking of reading material. Books, comic books, newspapers, magazines and online reading materials are equally valid and important entry points to reading for children and adults alike. … Books and other printed texts are important. But in recognition of the digital opportunities, people should be encouraged to read what they enjoy reading, in whatever format is most pleasurable and convenient for them. (European Commission, 2012)
When we read a book, our internal imagining of the words on the page is entirely individual.
The biggest deficit that we have in our society and in the world right now is an empathy deficit. We are in great need of people being able to stand in somebody else’s shoes and see the world through their eyes. Obama (quoted in Rutsch, 2010, 00:22)
The books which we live through together for the sole purpose of shared enjoyment represent a rich resource for conversation, for connection and for spinning webs of reader relationships. Such ‘books in common’ nurture our pleasure in reading and play a particularly resonant role in helping build communities of engaged readers. (Cremin, 2019)
motivated to read, strategic in their approaches to reading, knowledgeable in their construction of meaning from text, and socially interactive while reading. (Guthrie et al., 2012, p. 601).
Books, which bring new ideas, new experiences, new vistas, and new information into the home, extend possible conversational topics beyond what the family members can directly experience in their lives. (Mallette and Barone, 2016, p. 480)
To be able to put the right book in the right child’s hands at the right moment can change a child’s relationship with reading forever. (Collins and Safford, 2008)