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September 25, 2018

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Home » Feature » Education

How do we foster a love of literature?

By Adam Crossley | 00:01 UTC+8 September 25, 2018 | Print Edition

As a high school English teacher, I can easily see which students love reading. These students come in with a book under their arm and are always ready to share their latest literary adventure with me. Where does that love come from?

It all starts with dinosaurs. Or at least it does with my own son. He can’t get enough of them, so we read books about dinosaurs until I’ve learned minute details about the mating calls of the parasaurolophus and the plesiosaur.

A great way to get your children to love reading is to find out what they like, and then build your stock of kids’ books around that topic.

Make time to read them together. Before bed is the obvious one, but we also usually sneak in a book before any TV time on the weekends.

The most important detail is to start reading to children when they are very young, 6 months old is definitely not too early, and keep reading to them as frequently as possible. When you find a topic your child likes, milk it! Get as many books on that topic as you can find.

As your child grows older, try implementing a reading pause each evening, where everyone picks up a book for a set amount of time. This might even rekindle your own love of reading. The wonderful thing is that once your child gets momentum in their reading habit, it becomes like a snowball rolling down a hill.

Be ready for an earful about Brachiosaurus. Be interested! Or at least pretend to be interested!

As their love of reading grows they will find more engaging stories and topics, and you will find the quality of their thinking and conversational topics greatly enriched.

Education


 

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