Raising Kids Who Read Read online

  Figure 10.2. The effects of rewards. Another example of how a reward changes your thinking about why you do something: people are often less likely to help a friend when offered a reward. If I ask you to help me move my couch, you probably perceive it as a social transaction; your reason to help me out is that you like to see yourself as helpful. But if I say, “I’ll give you five dollars to help me move my couch,” I’ve turned it into a financial transaction, and five dollars may not seem like enough money for the work.

  Figure 10.3. Classroom library. Classroom libraries are highly desirable to facilitate silent pleasure reading. Unfortunately, classroom libraries become less common as kids advance through the grades.

  Figure 10.4. Does multitasking affect the brain? Trying to do two or things simultaneously demands frequent shifts in attention and could—the theory goes—exacerbate the web-generated tendency to read by skimming.

  Figure 10.5. The architecture of the mind. The adaptability of the mind may be compared to a home’s floor plan, where each room is like a cognitive process. You can expand or shrink rooms without affecting the overall design, but trying to move the living room from the front of the house to the back—a major reorganization—would be very disruptive.

  Figure 10.6. Omnipresent entertainment. You have diversion in your pocket, so there is never a reason to be bored, even in the few minutes that these people are waiting for the Metro in the Washington, DC, area.

  Figure 10.7. How television affected reading. When television became widely available in the 1950s, both reading and radio use dropped, but not across the board. People read less light fiction because television offered light drama. People saw television news coverage as thin, so they still read newspapers. This pattern of data led to the functional equivalence hypothesis: an activity is more likely to displace another if it better serves the same function. If it serves a different function, it’s less likely to displace it.

  Figure 10.8. Jeff Kinney, author of Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Kinney didn’t intentionally write his books for reluctant readers, but the response from kids who previously disliked reading has been overwhelming. Kinney’s books are wonderfully written and wonderfully funny, but the graphics are doubtless an important part of what makes them inviting.

  Figure C.1. Taking instructions too literally. This may be an urban myth, but the story is that a woman ordered a birthday cake and told the clerk she wanted these words on it: “Happy Birthday, and under that, All the best wishes.” The decorator dutifully wrote exactly what was described. You have to keep the overall goal of a project in mind, not just faithfully comply with the instructions.

  Raising Kids Who Read

  What Parents and Teachers Can Do

  Daniel T. Willingham

  Cover design by Wiley

  Baby reading © Jose Manuel Gelpi diaz | Thinkstock

  Kids reading © Jacek Chabraszewski | Thinkstock

  Girl reading © Stuart Miles | Thinkstock

  Copyright © 2015 by Daniel T. Willingham. All rights reserved.

  Published by Jossey-Bass

  A Wiley Brand

  One Montgomery Street, Suite 1200, San Francisco, CA 94104–4594—www.josseybass.com/highereducation

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400, fax 978-646-8600, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, 201-748-6011, fax 201-748-6008, or online at www.wiley.com/go/permissions.

  Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages. Readers should be aware that Internet websites offered as citations and/or sources for further information may have changed or disappeared between the time this was written and when it is read.

  Jossey-Bass books and products are available through most bookstores. To contact Jossey-Bass directly call our Customer Care Department within the U.S. at 800-956-7739, outside the U.S. at 317-572-3986, or fax 317-572-4002.

  Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for and is on file with the Library of Congress.

  ISBN 978-1-118-76972-0 (cloth); ISBN 978-1-118-91150-1 (ebk.); ISBN 978-1-118-91158-7 (ebk.)

  For Trisha

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Daniel Willingham is professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, where he has taught since 1992. Until about 2000, his research focused solely on the brain basis of learning and memory. Today, all of his research concerns the application of cognitive psychology to K–16 education. He writes the “Ask the Cognitive Scientist” column for American Educator magazine and is the author of Why Don’t Students Like School? (Jossey-Bass, 2009) and When Can You Trust the Experts? (Jossey-Bass, 2012). His writing on education has appeared in thirteen languages. He earned his BA from Duke University and his PhD in cognitive psychology from Harvard University. His website is www.danielwillingham.com.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I received useful feedback from Helen Alston, Karin Chenoweth, Tracy Gallagher, Fred Greenewalt, Lisa Guernsey, Michael Kamil, Margie McAneny, Mike McKenna, and Steve Straight. Special thanks to Lauren Goldberg, Kristen Turner, and Shannon Wendling and to seven anonymous reviewers, each of whom provided detailed comments on the entire manuscript. Gail Lovette generously offered consultation throughout this project. David Dobolyi did yeoman’s work on the survey reported in the Introduction, and Anne Carlyle Lindsay created many of the figures. My thanks, as ever, to Esmond Harmsworth for his unfailing support and sound advice, and to Margie McAneny, who took special care with this project. Most of all, I thank Trisha Thompson-Willingham, my parenting lodestar; her wisdom informs much of the approach outlined in this book.

  Introduction

  Have Fun, Start Now

  We’re going to start this book with a quick thought experiment. Suppose you have a teenaged child. (If you actually do, so much the better.) Surveys show that the typical teen has about five hours of leisure time each weekday. How would you like your teenager to spend those five hours? To provide a little structure, I’ll give you six categories of activities among which the time could be allocated. (Note that with six categories, equal time to each activity is fifty minutes.)

  Relaxing/thinking __ minutes

  Playing video games/using a computer __ minutes

  Reading __ minutes

  Socializing __ minutes

  Watching television __ minutes

  Playing sports __ minutes

  Have your answers?
You can compare them to the results of a survey I conducted of three hundred American adults. I’ve also depicted the actual number of minutes that teens spend on each activity, according to the national American Time Use Survey (figure I.1). For reading, the hoped-for amount among my respondents was 75 minutes. The actual time American teenagers spend reading is 6 minutes.

  Figure I.1. Wishes versus reality in teenagers’ leisure time. Darker bars show how our survey respondents hoped teenagers would spend their leisure time. Lighter bars show actual leisure time spent, according to the American Time Use Survey.

  Source: © Daniel Willingham.

  The purpose of this book is simple. Parents want kids to read. Most kids don’t. What can parents do about that?

  Of course, some kids do grow up as readers. The numbers in figure I.1 are a little deceptive because they are averages; it’s not that each teenager goes home from school, reads for six minutes, and then puts the book down. Most kids don’t read at all, and a few read quite a lot. Can the parents of those readers provide us with any guidance?

  In my experience, most of those parents have little idea of how their kids ended up as readers. A conversation I had with an editor at the New York Times is typical. I mentioned I was working on this book, and he told me that his eighth grader was the kind of kid who had to be reminded to step outside every now and then to get a little fresh air, so devoted was she to whatever book she was reading. When I asked what he and his wife had done to foster this passion, he laughed heartily and said, “Not a damn thing.”

  Now, almost certainly he has done things that prompted his child to read. He’s a newspaper editor, for crying out loud. He probably read to his daughter when she was little, his house is probably filled with books, and so on. I’m sure he’d agree. What I think he meant by “not a damn thing” was, “We didn’t plan it.” Parents who raise readers don’t do things that look especially academic. They aren’t tiger parents, breaking out flash cards when their baby turns twelve months and starting handwriting drills at twenty-four months. Such measures are not only unnecessary, they would undercut a crucial positive message that these parents consistently send: reading brings pleasure. Most of what I suggest in this book is in the spirit of emulating nontiger parents, and I encapsulate it in this simple principle: Have fun.

  Another principle guides the advice in this book: Start now. Parents tend to think about the different aspects of reading as each comes up in school. They think about decoding (learning the sounds that letters make) in kindergarten, when it’s first taught. Parents don’t think about reading comprehension at that point, because it’s not emphasized in kindergarten. If kids can accurately say aloud the words on the page, they are “reading.” But by around the fourth grade, most kids decode pretty well, and suddenly the expectation for comprehension ratchets up. At the same time, the material they are asked to read gets more complex. The result is that some kids who learned to decode just fine have trouble when they hit the higher comprehension demands in fourth grade. And that’s when their parents start to wonder how they can support reading comprehension.

  Parents often don’t think about reading motivation until middle school. Almost all children like to read in the early elementary years. They like it at school, and they like it at home. But research shows that their attitudes toward reading get more negative with each passing year. It’s easy for parents to overlook this change because children’s lives get so much busier as they move through elementary school; they spend more time with friends, perhaps they take up an instrument or sport, and so on. When puberty hits, their interest in reading really bottoms out. A parent now realizes that her child never willingly reads and starts to think about how to motivate reading.

  At these three crisis points that prompt parents to think about reading, we see the three footings for a reading foundation. If you want to raise a reader, your child must decode easily, comprehend what he reads, and be motivated to read.

  How, then, to ensure that these three desiderata are in place?

  Obviously, hoping for the best and reacting if a problem becomes manifest is not the best strategy. It’s easier to avoid problems than to correct them. But reading presents a peculiar challenge because experiences that seem unimportant are actually crucial to building knowledge that will aid reading. Even stranger, this knowledge may be acquired months or even years before it’s needed. It lies dormant until the child hits the right stage of reading development, and then abruptly it becomes relevant. That’s why the second guiding principle of this book is, Start now. “Start now” means attending to decoding, comprehension, and motivation early in life—as early as infancy. But it also means that action to support your child’s reading never comes too late, even if your child is older and you’ve done nothing until now. Just start.

  These three foundations also provide an organizing principle for this book. In the first chapter, you’ll get some of the science of reading under your belt. How do children learn to decode? What is the mechanism by which they understand what they read, or don’t? And why are some children motivated to read, whereas others are not? The remainder of the book is separated into three parts, divided by age: birth through preschool, kindergarten through second grade, and third grade and beyond. Within each part, separate chapters are devoted to how you can support decoding, comprehension, and motivation at that age. I will discuss not only what you can do at home, but what you can expect will be happening in your child’s classroom.

  That said, if you want to raise a reader, you should not rely much on your child’s school. That’s not a criticism of schools but rather a reflection of what this enterprise is all about. Let me put it this way. You’ve got this book in your hands, so I’m assuming you’re at least somewhat interested in your child being a leisure reader. Why?

  Some answers to this question are grounded in practical concerns. Reading during your leisure time makes you smarter. Leisure readers grow up to get better jobs and make more money. Readers are better informed about current events, and so make better citizens.

  These motives are not unreasonable, but they are not my motives. If I found out tomorrow that the research was flawed and that reading doesn’t makes you smarter, I would still want my kids to read. I want them to read because I think reading offers experiences otherwise unavailable. There are other ways to learn, other ways to empathize with our fellow human beings, other ways to appreciate beauty; but the texture of these experiences is different when we read. I want my children to experience it. Thus, for me, reading is a value. It’s a value—like loving my country or revering honesty. It’s this status as a value that prompts to me to say, “Don’t expect the schools to do the job for you.”

  I’m reminded of a parent I know who was dismayed when his child announced that she was marrying someone of a different faith. Her father asked how the children would be raised, and she made it plain she was not much concerned one way or the other. Although he and his wife had not made religious identity much of a priority at home, he was nevertheless surprised and hurt by his daughter’s decision. “I can’t understand it,” he told me. “We sent her to Sunday school every week.” He had subcontracted the development of this core value.

  If you want your child to value reading, schools can help, but you, the parent, have the greater influence and bear the greater responsibility. You can’t just talk about what a good idea reading is. Your child needs to observe that reading matters to you, that you live like a reader. Raising Kids Who Read aims to show you in some detail how to do that and with a sensibility that embodies two principles: we have fun, and we start now.

  Notes

  “makes you smarter”: Ritchie, Bates, and Plomin (2014).

  “better jobs and make more money”: Card (1999); Moffitt and Wartella (1991).

  “maker better citizens”: Bennett, Rhine, and Flickinger (2000).

  Chapter 1

  The Science of Reading

  Scientists have learned a lot about the m
ental machinery that supports reading, and this research base inspires much of what I suggest you do throughout this book. So we need to get the basics of these scientific findings straight. I’ll introduce scientific findings about reading as they become relevant, but this chapter starts with three foundational principles, to which we’ll return again and again: (1) the sounds that letters make (not their shape) pose the real challenge as children learn to read print, (2) comprehending what we read depends mostly on our general knowledge about the topic, and (3) the key to motivation lies in getting kids to read even when they aren’t motivated to do so.

  The Role of Sound in Reading

  We think of reading as a silent activity—consider a hushed library—but sound in fact lies at its core. Print is mostly a code for sound. English uses some symbols that carry meaning directly; for example, “$” means dollars, “@” means at, and “:-)” means smiling. But “bag” is not a symbol for a paper sack. It’s three letters, each of which signifies a sound; together, the sounds signify a spoken word. English is not alone in using a sound-based writing system. All written languages have some number of symbols that carry meaning, but the workhorse of communication is a sound-based code.