This post by Kelly originally appeared on the Little Pickle Press blog on 8/7/14.
I don’t just watch trends happen in education when it comes to reading: I live them daily. In my two decades as an educator in various capacities, I have seen my share of trends come and go when it comes to instruction of reading, but there are some constants and hard data that educators and parents use to make decisions about reading. The research is telling us a number of disturbing trends about how fewer parents are reading to their children and that in the previous 30 years we’ve seen reading decline further and further amongst children.
So, when I hear things like “Kids just aren’t reading these days!” I have to stop myself from arguing against it when the research and data tells us that it’s true. Developmentally, reading is a part of what makes our imaginations blossom and our worldview expand, but I also know that there are other things capturing the attention of children.
Naturally, much of this discussion comes with advances in technology and apps that are appealing to younger and younger children. Getting my own teens to continue reading long after I stopped reading to them was a battle but we got lucky in that they found what interested them early on and it they were varied genres. Of course, I didn’t have to compete with smartphones or easily accessible apps to get my own children to read. While they were growing up the media that vied for their attention was the television or video games and even that wasn’t seen as an “addiction” like many believe it to be today.
Click here to read the full post on the Little Pickle Press blog.