Reading and Remembering

I have come upon some more greats sections in my book Laying Down the Rails, Reading for Instruction and Remembering. They really go hand in hand. Let's start with Reading for Instruction. One without the other is totally pointless otherwise.

1. "During your child's sixth through twelfth years, concentrate on cultivating this habit of reading for instruction."

There is so much here under this one point. Here is a CM quote, "The most common and monstrous defect in the education of the day is that children fail to aquire the habit of reading." This was really convicting for me that I was wondering if I had made life a little too exciting for my children. There wasn't enough down time for them to read or even enough boring moments to make reading seem attractive. Perhaps there were too much TV or video games or too many activities. My children have come to ask me what we are doing today and where are we going. If we are always going and doing then there isn't time to read or be reading. I had to look at how we were spending our time. I needed to make more time for them to read and more appealing.


2. "Read aloud to your older children only occasionally."

This one hit me right between the eyes with the force a semi! Listen to this quote, "......give him the habit of being read to, and he will steadily shirk the labour of reading for himself; inded, we all like to be spoon-fed with our intellectual meat, or we should read and think more for ourselves...." I have been reading almost all of our school books to my dd who is almost 12, there by enabling her to be shriker. She really hasn't gotten into the habit of reading for herself. It has only been lately that she has really started to read books herself. It is also one of the reasons we changed curriculum as I was teaching all of the children together and then because the boys were younger I would read all of the books aloud. I could tell she wasn't getting as much out of it as if she would have read it to herself. When she has to read the books herself, then she has to "own" that knowledge. She has become responsible for the information in the book.

Does this mean I won't read aloud anymore, of course not. I just won't read aloud as much and maybe we can read more books for pleasure. Which in turn will probably save my voice more.

The next sections is, Remembering, which fits in so nicely with reading for instruction. I am only going to higlight a few of the points.

1. Cramming for a test does not assure remembering and knowing.

I have so been there and done that. Hasn't everyone done that and how much do you remember later?

2. Link each lesson to the previous one in a mental train.

This one is easy to do by asking about we have read yesterday. Here is a quote, "Let every lesson gain the child's entire attention and let each new lesson be so interlaced with the last that the one must recall the other; that, again, recalls the one before it, and so on to the beginning"

Both of these habits go hand in hand, otherwise what is the point of reading for instruction if we can't remember it. We have this opprotunity, since we homeschool, to avoid the cramming for tests and not being able to recall the information. I have a nephew in college who was telling me that he was up very late the night before to study for a history test. When I asked what kind of history test all he could tell me was American history from 1900. Do you think he remembered anything that he crammed for. Sadly, no, I don't think he did. This is what we want to advoid.

One thing that I really like in this book, is that at the end of the chapters are questions. No, not comprehension questions, but more application style questions. I'll leave you with this one.

Am I improving in finding various kinds of links between subjects of lessons- whether similarities, differences, or something else?


You really need to read this book. It has changed my homeschooling for the better.