You’re never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read with a child

You’re never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read with a child.  Some other quotes here that go with our Read Across America blog post.

Having Fun Helping Read Across America Celebrate Dr. Seuss’s Birthday

“You’re never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read with a child.” Dr. Seuss

Bonnie James reads :Walter the Farting Dog" to 3rd grade class--showing how much fun a story can be.

How do you get a room full of 3rd graders to laugh outloud while still concentrating on a story?  Read them something hilarious.  A student at my alma mater,  the Ohio State University, asked me to participate in the NEA’s Read Across America annual reading motivation and awareness program.  It was started in 1998 on March 2nd  as a celebration of Dr. Suess’s birthday and has grown each year since.  I was asked to read to a class of third graders at Prairie Norton Elementary School where I had read to a class of first graders last year (Archie Griffin read there last year as well) and is also where I taught shortly after graduating and loved it.  I didn’t read a Dr. Suess book this time, but with permission from the teacher, I gave the students a choice of books, one of them being Walter the Farting Dog by Kotzwinkle and Glenn Murray, illustrated (terrifically) by Audrey Colman and of course they chose it.  I told them to me it was a magic book and they had all kinds of suggestions as to why I would say that.  I related that it was because of how magically it changed things on the day I bought it.  Our family was at COSI and it was one of those days when no one could get along and some were pretty grouchy. On the way out, I found this book at the gift store and we shared it in the car on the way home.  Soon, everyone was laughing so hard that they couldn’t be grouchy any more. 

I asked the class who liked to read.  The majority raised their hands and a few boys did not.  (As you might have seen from other posts, there would have been more that don’t like to read if they were teens.)  When I told them that I teach teenagers and adults to like reading better by reading faster,  they seemed surprised that there are grown ups who take classes to learn to read better!  I decided to not just read the book to the class, but to start with some of the comprehension building techniques we use in our courses.  I asked them what they do before they start to read a book.  They had some really good answers–read the title, the author, flip through it to see if you’ll like it, read the back cover and read the beginning.  (In our course we call that the Overview.)  I was impressed and told them they had some good teachers.  (Their teacher in the back of the room smiled.)  I shared that I had asked the same question of a high school student recentlywho said he just started reading it.  Again, they were surprised.  I suggested that maybe he hadn’t had their good teachers, or maybe he had forgotten what he’d been taught.  

We did those things and then I read them the important dedication at the beginning of the book:  “For everyone who’s ever felt misjudged or misunderstood.”  To build on prior knowledge and get them personally involved,  I asked them if they ever had a dog that farted.  They giggled and some of theirs do.  They were shocked to learn that my cat does–but I told them that nobody’s perfect.  I asked them if they ever blamed anything they did on their dog–more giggling with some raised hands. 

Sometimes I read the page and then showed them the picture and sometimes I showed them the picture first and for really great pictures, we took the time to look at them closely before continuing the story.  During the course of the story, one of the boys raised his hand and suggested what might happen next.  I asked the class what he was doing by guessing what might happen.  They knew the answer–he was predicting or anticipating.  I told them it was good to anticipate because they would then pay attention to see if they were right.  And by looking for answers to questions, they would have better comprehension.  As we got closer to the end, there were a lot of predictions.  The children had fun finding out if they were right.  When we were done, they passed the book around.  While that was going on, some of the girls came up and were fascinated by my book earrings, my “So Many Books, So Little Time” shirt, and my book dickie.  They said, “you must really like books!”  As I was leaving, the students were back at their desks where they enjoyed answering questions their teacher asked them about the story.  It was a great experience.  Wonderful children, wondeful teacher Kelly Egbert and great school.  And I hope that those boys who said they didn’t like to read, got a feel for how fun it can be.

Read Across America is designed to motivate children to read because children who read do better in school.  NEA’s Read Across America also provides NEA members, parents, caregivers, and children the resources and activities they need to keep reading on the calendar 365 days a year.  In addition to the 3.2 million elementary and secondary teachers, higher education faculty, education support professionals, school administrators, retired educators, and students preparing to become teachers who make up NEA membership, some 50 national organizations and associations give their support.

 It might be too late to participate in this year’s annual event, but NEA’s Read Across America  has resource materials which offer numerous opportunities for involvement in children’s reading throughout the year. According to their website, “the only thing you need to do is plan how, where, and when you will read to a child or teen in your life – everyday.”  The Read Across America has a Fan page and Cause page on Facebook and also has the Read Across America Channel on Schooltube.com for videos.

Have some fun, too!

Bonnie James

What Do Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, JFK, and Jimmy Carter Have in Common Aside from Having Been President?

“Don’t be afraid to go in your library and read every book.”–Dwight D. Eisenhower

What do Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, and Jimmy Carter have in common aside from having served as President of the Unites States?

1. The were all Republicans.
2. They were all Democrats.
3. They are all on Mount Rushmore.
4. They were all speedreaders.

The answer is 4.  All of these Presidents were speed readers.  Rumor has it that George Washington and Abe Lincoln were also speedreaders–but we really don’t know.   The Roosevelts were self-taught; whereas, Kennedy and Carter took speed reading classes.  Jimmy Carter participated in speed reading classes at the White House with his wife Rosalynn and daughter Amy and read two books a week even with his busy schedule.  Kennedy took speed reading classes with his brother Bobby. Both presidents then brought in speed reading instruction for their staff so that they would be productive readers as well.   JFK could read 2,500 wpm, in part because he was able to read large groups of words at a glance, and regularly read 6 newspapers front to back at breakfast.

Jimmy and Amy Carter engaged in a speedreading course at the White House.

The Roosevelts both taught themselves to speed read.  FDR began his speedreading training by reading two or three words at a time, building to reading two or three lines at a glance, and eventually working up to absorbing entire paragraphs.  Sometimes he would glance at a page, then turn the page and consider what the writer was saying.  Teddy read a book before breakfast every day when he was President and sometimes read as many as three books a day.  His comprehension and recall were fantastic:  He could remember all the important points and even quote from the books he read.

There is a bumper sticker that says Readers Are Leaders.  In the case of these presidents, we could say Speed Readers Lead.  I have met many highly successful people who have told me that they had taken a speed reading course along the way, and we have taught many rising leaders.  I taught a high school sophmore last weekend who doen’t aspire to the presidency, but he has definite leadership goals and this was a step in meeting them. You might not become a president after taking our course, but you will have the tools and confidence to reach your career and education goals.  To honor the Speed Reading Presidents, all who sign up for any of our spring courses by Wednesday, February 22nd can save $50 and take it for the student rate of $425.  Become a speedreader:  You’ll be in great company!

Judith Barker
Bonnie James

Are You as Confused About Practice and Perfection as Wilt Chamberlain?

“They say that nobody is perfect.  Then they tell you practice makes perfect.  I wish they’d make up their minds.”                          –Wilt Chamberlain

When learning a skill–be it baseball, conversational Spanish, or guitar–you know that practice is the key to mastering it.  (By mastering we mean becoming excellent, not perfect.  As Michael J. Fox once said, “I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection.  Excellence, I can reach for, perfection is God’s business.”)  In his new book Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning, Gary Marcus, a cognitive psychologist at New York University, sets out to learn to play the guitar at the advanced age of 38.  What Gary stresses in his book is that deliberate practice is the key.  “Playing for fun and repeating what you already know is not necessarily the same as efficiently reaching a new level.” 

What is important is a “constant sense of evaluation, of focusing on one’s weaknesses.”  Whether it’s your batting swing, your Spanish pronunciation, or your guitar chords, practicing them wrong is doing more harm than good.  This is true for reading as well.  To get better and better requires letting go of old habits and doing the hard work to form new habits; then practicing them to become and stay an excellent reader, while letting go of the idea of being a “perfect” reader.

I’ve heard parents complain about their children and their ability to read:  “I make him read every night for an hour, and he still is a terrible reader.”  Chances are the parents were never taught to read correctly.  They were taught just to pronounce words by pointing at each individual word making sure “they got it” (were perfect) before moving on.  This misinformation they passed on to their child.  So the child practices reading incorrectly every day and gets further entrenched in bad reading habits–and this practice is boring, even tortuous–and eventually he will hate to read .  What the child–and the grown up version of that child–needs is instruction on how to read correctly and then deliberate practice.

If you’ve already taken the Advanced Reading Concepts speedreading course, you know that mastering speedreading does not end when the course does.  It is essential that you continue to do your eyecharts and to practice the techniques you’ve learned, particularly those that are most difficult.  It is through diligent, deliberate practice that you will be a master speedreader.  If you’re a graduate and would like some help with your speedreading practice, consider purchasing our WIIFM Stick™, a little flash drive that reviews everything covered in our course.

Judith Barker

Bonnie James

Delight and surprise: a review of Likeable Social Media

Delight and surprise: a review of Likeable Social Media.

Great article.  We’re new at this so we found this helpful–as are her other blogs!

Changing a habit — Live Instruction or Virtual?

For 35 Years, our niche has been “real instruction–real results.” Learning a new skill is better with a good coach who will watch what you are doing, show you the right way to do it, help you practice correctly (the subject of our next blog), change the examples given to fit your needs, encourage you when you are discouraged, and celebrate your successes. And that’s why we’ve always chosen this route.

Through the years, the main thing that has changed is that in today’s frazzled world, people are very impatient about how long it takes is to make change. A great quote I heard recently was “instant gratification takes too long.” Our courses went from 8 weeks (the length of time it takes for a new habit to take hold) to 5 weeks to fit into school terms, to weekend classes to accommodate busy people and those coming in from out-of-town. Now people say “a WHOLE weekend?” We’re mixing that up a bit for spring–evening classes in a shorter time span, a weekend class with the Sunday session starting in the afternoon for people who go to church on Sunday morning and things like that–making it easier to schedule for people who find changing a life time habit to be more effective with a good coach.

We’ve come to realize that there are some people who want to learn to read faster who are just never going to be able to come for an in-person class. Some people want to take an introductory seminar before allocating the resources and time for a full course. Some people live too far away for it to be practical to come to a short seminar. Some people just have crazy schedules.

So, we have launched a seminar that can be done on-line. It gives some of the basic strategies that speed readers use and our graduates’ favorite eye technique that increases reading speed by about 100 words per minute. It still takes an uninterrupted hour. It really does. People can go back to the site five times to get better and better or in case they get interrupted.

Learning to be a more efficient reader is essential for gathering the necessary information in this fast paced world. So just as it might be more efficient to have a personal trainer instead of a video, a ski instructor instead of a tape–watching a video or listening to a tape will improve a skill a lot more than never making the effort to improve. Our on-line seminar will make people faster than if they never tried to change.   And we want to help everyone with an interest read faster and understand more.

Books for Reluctant Readers

If your middle-school and high-school students are reluctant to read because they can’t find a “good” book, perhaps one of these will motivate them. 

1. One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams-Garcia (2010).  Grades 4-7.  In the summer of 1968, Delphine and her little sisters fly across country to Oakland to spend the summer with their mother, who they have not seen in years.  Their mother, who seems to resent their intrusion, sends them every morning to a camp run by the Black Panthers.
2. Countdown by Deborah Wiles (2010).  Grades 5-8.  Franny, a fifth grader in suburban Maryland, must deal with her quirky family, as well as her fear of impending war during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
3. Penny from Heaven by Jennifer L. Holm (2007).  Grades 5-8.  In the summer of 1953 Penny loves baseball, swimming, butter pecan ice cream and spending time with her father’s large Italian family.  Her father died when she was still a baby, but none of her family will talk to her about his death. 
4. The Watsons Go to Birmingham–1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis (1995).  Grades 5-8.   Ten-year-old Kenny and his family go to Birmingham, Alabama to visit his grandmother, heading straight for one of the darkest moments in America’s history.
5. The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt (2007).  Grades 5-9.  On Wednesday afternoons when half the seventh-grade class goes to Hebrew school and the other half to Catechism, Holling, the lone Presbyterian, finds himself alone with Mrs. Baker, who takes the opportunity to expose Holling to Shakespeare.  Oh how she must hate him!
6. Harris and Me by Gary Paulsen (2007).  Grades 6-9.  A young boy is sent to his cousin’s farm to spend the summer, where he encounters the rigors of farm life and his daring cousin Harris.
7. Peeled by Joan Bauer (2008).  Grades 6-9.  Hildy Biddle, a reporter for her high school paper, is investigating rumors of a ghost at the old Ludlow apple orchard.
8. Flip by Martyn Bedford (2011).  Grades 7-10.  One early summer morning, 14-year-old Alex wakes up in a strange body in a strange bed in a strange room in a strange house, and he has no recollection of anything that has happened since last December.
9. Trapped by Michael Northrup (2011).  Grades 7-10.  Seven teenagers are trapped in their rural New England high school by the worst  nor’easter on record.
10. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (2009).  Grades 7-10.  Fourteen-year-old Junior, a bright but poor Spokane Indian living on a reservation, finds himself stuck between two worlds when he decides to leave the reservation school to attend an all-white school 22 miles from home.
11. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton (1967).  Grades 7-10.  Ponyboy lives on the wrong side of town with his two older brothers.  The brothers spend a lot of time with their gang, the Greasers, who are constantly at war with the Socs, the rich kids from the other side of town.
12. The Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999).  Grades 9-12.  This coming-of-age novel tells the story of Charlie, a brilliant high-school freshman, whose best friend committed suicide.

Judith Barker

Bonnie James