Affective Dimensions on Reading

Currently I enjoy reading, although this wasn’t always the case. I think back to the time when I was learning to read. I guess I think back to this time because I spend a lot of time reading with my son Collin, who is learning to read. He doesn’t know this but he is already a much better reader than I was in second grade. I really didn’t learn to read until 2^nd grade. Collin really enjoys listening to me read to him. Right now we are reading the book “The Blue Comet”. I think he enjoys this story so much because it has all the elements he can relate to: a boy his age, his father, his love for trains and his struggles with the subject of math. I struggled to learn to read and didn’t like reading until about the fourth grade. Like Collin, I didn’t like reading until I could start choosing what I wanted to read. I remember enjoying book reports for this reason. Later, parts of history and reading in social studies became more interesting, mostly because of the way the story evolved. My Mother, a teacher and librarian always pushed various books before me to encourage and interest me in reading. Her persistence eventually paid off. Dry Academic reading was and still is the most challenging. I think most of us have trained ourselves for this type of reading with great discipline and focus. I think when I can visualize what I’m reading it make more sense than when I can’t. If I can’t attach a subject to a more tangible context it’s much harder. As I think about teaching and educating my son, how do you teach this skill? Only recently have I had teachers that assign reading in groups for group discussion. I do think this approach is effective for academic reading. Class discussions help, breaking the content down into manageable segments helps as well as varying the types of activities. I hope as a teacher to include these types of approaches to help make reading an enjoyable activity to facilitate learning.