Pam Allyn comments:
“More than ever, dads are reading to their kids. I am thrilled about this. It’s crucial that boys and girls see their dads as readers. This is the number one most important way we are going to break the negative cycle of boys as nonreaders.”
I have not read the book, and I am usually suspicious of any list of “best books for boys” because of stereotyping issues, or authors simply listing their own books, but I’m impressed by Pam Allyn.
I’m also very, very impressed with the Read Aloud Dad blog and you’ll now find it on the sidebar (which I keep over on the, er, side).
Go to this link to read what happens when Pam Allyn visits Read Aloud Dad to answer 10 Burning Questions.
A couple of highlights from Pam’s answers:
* I think it’s really more a question of what we are not doing for boys as a society. We have enculterated reading to the point where it seems uncool to be a reader if you are a boy. What is valued in the media is boys who are active and moving quickly, boys in sports, boys who are not sitting down. We also do not value what many boys like to read. We devalue internet surfing. We devalue reading nonfiction. We have to make a far greater effort to be sure we are including boys and girls in the club of reading, and help them to value their reading journeys.
* One big problem is the emphasis in the upper elementary and middle grades on the whole class novel. The whole class novel has been pretty successful in convincing boys NOT to read. The whole class novel is the single most deadly bullet aimed directly at boys’ impulse to read. The teacher has selected a book for the entire class that is about something the boy doesn’t have that much interest in, or it’s about a twelve-year-old girl.
* Yolanda Miller asks, “What Are Fathers For?” She begins with a great quote from Gloria Steinem, “Most American children suffer too much mother and too little father.” About midway she writes:
By manhood, I do not mean the stereotypical beer-belching, video-game-playing, sports-fanatical behavior often attributed to men—I mean something deeper. I am talking about the core essence of a male identity that has gone missing. As gender roles have morphed, women have preached and proven their self-sufficiency. The end result is that we have implied (and sometimes stated) that men are no longer wanted or needed and that their contributions, outside of sperm and salary, are no longer desirable.
* Here’s an entertaining site for to-the-point book reviews from a retired guy’s perspective: “My Dad Reads Too Many Books.”
* This “Dedicated Dads Program” invites fathers into the school:
Watch D.O.G.S. (Dads of Great Students) is the parental involvement initiative of the National Center for Fathering that organizes fathers and father figures to provide positive male role models for students and to enhance school security.
At Anderson-Livsey Elementary, which opened in the Shiloh cluster at the beginning of the school year, officials launched the program in the school to ensure students would have male role models.
“The whole goal of Watch D.O.G.S. is to attract and get positive male role models into the education system,” said Darren Boyce, the school’s parent instructional support coordinator.
* Anna Richardson reports: “Kids prefer gossip mags to books.”
A National Year of Reading study [based in Australia] has revealed that children are reading celebrity gossip magazines such as Heat and Bliss instead of books, especially if the novels stretch to more than 100 pages, reports the Daily Telegraph.
Boys and girls as young as 11 said they preferred absorbing the exploits of pop stars and models such as Amy Winehouse and Kate Moss to reading books by Jacqueline Wilson or Philip Pullman.
The study sparked debate on whether children were damaging their development by reading such magazine, or whether children should be encouraged to read what they liked, as long as it was reading.
* Over at my other blog, Jamespreller.com, I had t
* Here’s a terrific way for schools to boost reading: the five-million page challenge.
Heritage Elementary School, the largest elementary school in the district, read 635,103 pages. Although the school didn’t set a particular goal, there was some friendly competition between the girls and the boys.
“The girls barely won over the boys,” said library media specialist Michelle Barnes.
“We had an assembly last Friday (March 4) where several girls got to spray shaving cream all over a fourth-grade teacher and other girls got to spray silly string all over the principal.
Photo: Lindsay Keefer.
* An amazing story about a British father with a motor neurone disease who is set to record 1,600 words before losing his voice forever.
Laurence Brewer will record 1,600 sentences for a computer program that will break them up into individual sounds and then piece them back together again to form words under Brewer’s control. Brewer said his inspiration for the project was his 13-month-old son.
He said, “He is the key motivation for me to record my voice so that if my voice is lost, he can still hear what his dad sounds like. I might be able to read him bedtime stories; your voice is part of your identity. He can maybe also hear what I sound like when I am no longer here.”
* A University of Washington study shows that second-grade students associate math with boys and reading with girls.
Our results show that cultural stereotypes about math are absorbed strikingly early in development, prior to ages at which there are gender differences in math achievement,” said Andrew Meltzoff, co-author of the study.
* Speaking of stereotypes that limit boys, Eva Pearlman asks questions about why the acceptable range of expression for girls seems to have expanded — tough and athletic is cool — there is no or little leeway for boys.
As a society we seem to be more comfortable with a tree-climbing, ball-playing, T-shirt-and-jeans-wearing girl then a pink-wearing, non-sports-playing boy who prefers quiet arts-and-crafts projects.
Why is that?
* This is just great. Hat tip to my new friend, Deb Hanson, over at Real Men Read with Kids.
* Do you want boys to write? Start a blog! A primary school in Greater Manchester, England, claims that getting students to blog has helped make writing “cool.”
Pupils at Heathfield County Primary in Bolton regularly write blogs which are published on the school’s website.
Formerly, boys especially were not interested in writing, said the school.
But the number of students blogging has flourished while their results have risen almost seven-fold.
“The enthusiasm levels of the children are really, really high,” said deputy head David Mitchell who has pioneered online teaching at the school which includes blog writing.”
* Eight fights not worth having with your children (Check out #2). Judith Ancer writes:
2. It’s not worth fighting with your kids about what they’re reading, unless they’re not reading at all.
* Local football players visit classrooms to inspire boy (and girl) readers. Reports Linda Stein:
Photo: Geoff Patton.
TOWAMENCIN — Not even shoulder surgery could keep T.J. Smink from reading to students at General Nash Elementary School.
Smink, a center for the North Penn High School Knights who’s also a baseball player, was one of 70 football team members who fanned out to elementary schools in the district to read to younger children for the annual Reading Super Bowl on Thursday.
Cheryl Neubert, a parent who spearheaded the event in 2005, said the event has grown over the years to include all 13 elementary schools in the district.
<snip>
“A lot of kids look at football stars as their ideals,” [reading specialist Stacie] Moseley said. “A lot of boys, reading isn’t their priority.”
* The Brown Bookshelf, an absolutely great blog, recently ran a terrific interview with author Torrey Maldonado, a public school teacher who has some things to say about boys and reading:
“If we want better men, we must get more boys reading, period. Boys from A to Z connect to Secret Saturdays. I joke and say I use a few magic tricks to grab the interest of guys. Here’s one secret: I wrote Secret Saturdays so alpha male teens wouldn’t feel soft carrying it. And they do. On one hand, a maximum security jail for high school boys asked me to visit because their inmates LOVE my book and, on the other hand, honor roll student-fans phone i
* A veritable spate of articles lately about how e-readers appeal to kids. C. J. Lovelace reports on a Chambersburg, PA, middle school that features a boys Kindle reading club:
“They spent all of last year with Kindle clubs with the reluctant readers and they had phenomenal results,” [district head librarian Joanne] Hammond said. “They tracked the progress of the students and so many of them read so many books by the end of the year because they liked reading on the Kindle much better (than) the print book.”
Not sure if this trend has legs or not, but it’s worth tracking. From an article by Julie Bosman for The New York Times:
“The young adults and the teenagers are now the newest people who are beginning to experience e-readers,” said Matthew Shear, the publisher of St. Martin’s Press. “If they get hooked, it’s great stuff for the business.”
It is too soon to tell if younger people who have just picked up e-readers will stick to them in the long run, or grow bored and move on.
But Monica Vila, who runs the popular Web site The Online Mom and lectures frequently to parent groups about Internet safety, said that in recent months she had been bombarded with questions from parents about whether they should buy e-readers for their children.
In a speech last month at a parents’ association meeting in Westchester County, Ms. Vila asked for a show of hands to indicate how many parents had bought e-readers for their children as holiday gifts.
About half the hands in the room shot up, she recalled.
“Kids are drawn to the devices, and there’s a definite desire by parents to move books into this format,” Ms. Vila said. “Now you’re finding people who are saying: ‘Let’s use the platform. Let’s use it as a way for kids to learn.’ ”
Cats like ‘em, too! Photo: Joyce Dopkeen for the New York Times.
* Virginia’s Reading Teacher of the Year, Ashleigh Fisher, a reading specialist in Roanoke, is determined to hook ‘em all. She plans to use the $500 prize money to establish a book club for boys:
“It is pretty devastating. Boys score lower than girls; they don’t see reading as a masculine activity. Boys aren’t as engaged in reading as girls,” she said.
Fisher is setting out to change that by launching a lunchtime book club for third-, fourth- and fifth-grade boys. She said she would like to begin with The Strange Case of Origami Yoda by local author and former Roanoke Times columnist Tom Angleberger. The only thing keeping Fisher from beginning immediately is a lack of funding to buy several copies of the book.
* Many young boys are missing out on quality time with their fathers.
* Clint over at the Dadventure blog briefly reflects on reading with his children, and begins with this great, wise quote from Jim Trelease:
Fathers should make an extra effort to read to their children. Because the vast majority of primary-school teachers are women, young boys often associate reading with women and schoolwork. And just as unfortunate, too many fathers would rather be seen playing catch in the driveway with their sons than taking them to the library.
* In this piece by Maureen Downey, writing for the AJC Get Schooled Blog, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan points out that less than 2 percent of the nation’s teachers are black males:
Says Duncan, “We need more men of color in our schools, especially at the elementary schools.” He also advocates for more mentor-based programs in schools.
* Men Encourage Boys to Read: The Men Read Program is a volunteer program designed to help reluctant boy readers by using male role models from the community. Writes Sarah Stegall:
At Crystal Lake Elementary, eight men — seven from a local Army recruitment office — read to more than 50 students, said Crystal Lake’s media specialist, Lindsay Persohn.
Persohn said a lot of boys aren’t used to seeing men read at home.
“The idea for a grown man to not only read himself, but read with them was a whole new idea for some of those kids,” she said.
RICK RUNION/THE LEDGER
* Sherrill Nixon asks the question: Is any reading good reading?
* At Dance With Strangers/Parenthood Explained, Adam Cohen, a father of three boys, writes beautifully about their shared reading adventure, especially as it concerns finishing the 7th and final book in the Harry Potter series.
Here next to me is a boy who on Halloween said to me, “Dad, when I wear this costume I really feel like I AM Harry Potter,” before running off into the woods with his wand high and robes trailing. For all th
* The Roots of Reading Planted Here: Judith Ancer, a Johannesburg-based psychologist, makes the argument for raising children in a language-rich environment.
* The Culture of Low Expectations . . . and How It Holds Some Boys Back: An education watchdog organization, Ofsted, concludes in a recent report that some schools “set their sites too low for children from disadvantaged groups.”
Many schools “limit their ambition” for pupils from deprived backgrounds because they do not believe they can perform as well as other children, said Ofsted.
A culture of low expectations often contributed to poor standards of literacy among large numbers of children at a young age, it was claimed, holding them back throughout compulsory education.
* Video Games Boost Brainpower, says research:
Parents, the next time you fret that your child is wasting too much time playing video games, consider new research suggesting that video gaming may have real-world benefits for your child’s developing brain.
Daphne Bavelier is professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester. She studies young people playing action video games. Having now conducted more than 20 studies on the topic, Bavelier says, “It turns out that action video games are far from mindless.”
* Tips for Boy-Friendly Educational Approaches: The article, by Jeannette Kavanagh, looks at the literacy gap between boys and girls and offers these eight tips:
To ensure greater academic success for boys, our literacy teaching strategies must be more engaging for boys. We must:
* Allow greater choice in topics and the way assignments are completed, presented and assessed.
* Focus classroom activities on ways to harness boys’ energy.
* Ensure that lessons allow for movement rather than expect hours of sitting still and being sedate.
* Make learning more activity-centred rather than pen and paper
* Increase the range of literacy practices that are taught
* Encourage team effort and collaborative lea
