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Showing posts from July, 2011

Read to Me, Please! Why Parents Must Read to Their Children.

Over the last couple of years, I have developed a strong interest in investigating why some children are readers and others are not.  My interest arose after marking a particularly appalling set of exam papers for Grade 8 (12-13 year olds) in February of 2010.  All but a few managed to write an essay that had a beginning, middle and end, that used paragraphs and that contained a well-narrated, interesting storyline.  I started reading widely on the subject and also asked the pupils themselves what they had read as children and what their parents had read to them.  I was shocked to find that more than half could not remember anyone reading to them at all.  I was also shocked to find out how many of them had televisions and/or playstations in their rooms.  I came to the conclusion that, though I was teaching at a private school, many of the pupls had actually suffered some degree of emotional neglect: some hardly saw their parents at ...