Reading is one of the most important things that schools are charged with. When children enter school, one of the first skills they are expected to gain is the ability to read. As educators, we continue to learn more about the science of reading and how to analyze reading skills that children must acquire. Once children gain basic reading skills, the emphasis shifts to comprehension – and boy, does it shift. Text is analyzed. Discussions are held. Highlighting happens. We ask children to look for details, answer questions and notice text features. And sometimes, just sometimes, we suck the joy right out of reading.
I read constantly. Every day, no matter how busy I am, I read. I read for information and I read for pleasure. In the past two days, I have read to plan visits to travel sites, to figure out “whodunnit,” to synthesize information about a student needing support, and to learn what is going on in the world, locally and internationally. I’m sure that you, like me, can remember some of the reading activities of your school years that were boring, painful, and redundant. As we learn more about fostering reading skills, one of the things we know is that the more children read or are read to, the better a reader they become. Entering the world of books, no matter their length, their format, or their subject, is one of the great joys we can share with children. What books have you shared lately?
As September has come to a close, so have our daily read alouds in the WMS Learning Commons. As you may know, the past month featured many WMS friends reading to the children each day. Our special guests included Board members, grandparents, parents, staff members and, yes, even dogs. The children enjoyed the great pleasure of singing a song to get started and hearing about favorite characters in literature. Each day was a little different – though the routine remained the same.
Reading aloud is one of the most important things we can do for children. Read alouds offer the opportunity for children to experience books they may not be quite ready to take on by themselves. The characters come alive through the different voices, expressions and mannerisms that the reader brings to them. Children learn how a book “sounds.” Most of us can’t recall how we learned to read. What we know through research is that reading is multi-faceted. Children move from learning letter sounds to forming words by grouping letters together to eventually reading fluently rather than plodding along word by word.
This week has been spent culling the collection of books in our school’s library. It is a challenging job, especially for people who love books. Each book has its merits – one harder to part with than the next. You can tell so much about our library by the books in the collection. Some draw us in more than others. One of the sections I loved looking at was the books that have word play as the theme. Among the dictionaries, thesauruses and other reference materials, one can also find idioms and books about alternate uses of language or words. 
When I was a child, Tuesday was my favorite day of the week. The Bookmobile came to our local shopping center.
