Williams Chapter 5

“It is important to note that motivation to read and write in the majority of young children seldom is high.” And with this stunning piece of observational insight, Williams sums up one half of the reason for the literacy problems plaguing our schools. As James points out in his blog, reading improves writing. I am one of those that think you cannot have one without the other: Reading, and lots of it, is the best way to advance and improve a student or child’s writing ability. Motivation will always be a problem when attempting to get a child to read, but so what. Get off your ass and take your child to a library or book store and do it often. I just do not see any other way to get a child’s writing skills to develop or improve. I think comic books are a good way to motivate a child to read. Depending on the comic book, the vocabulary, themes and characterizations can be just as challenging and complex. Some of the distaste a child feels for the subject matter can be offset by the abbreviated length of the average graphic novel or comic book. In education, students, teachers and parents form the triad and if one of those links is weakened. The student’s abilities to read and write proficiently will be compromised. The bottom up approach Williams espouses seems like common sense to me. It would be difficult for me as a parent not to correct mispronunciations and syntactical errors and Williams seems to be on board with a corrective approach when teaching children to recognize the world around them. Failure to correct Williams notes, “would seriously affect a child’s ability to communicate with others.” It seems clear from the chapter that learning abilities and cognitive skills vary markedly from child to child. This just makes it all the more important for intensive involvement from the parents at early stages of the child’s development. The sooner a child is taught the basics of reading, the better. The fact that abilities between children vary is immaterial and approaches and expectations can be tailored to those abilities, but without the hours spent with their noses in books, all of the approaches whether they be bottom up or top down,  will be ineffective, and in the end, amount to little more than simple rhetoric.