This week's Musing......
Do you have a reading goal for the year, such as __ books? Why or why not?
I used to have a lot of fun with setting reading goals and participating with everyone else in sharing the reading we are all doing. Then kids happened, then school happened, then work happened. Each of these things decreased my reading time by just a little bit more. To be honest, the internet also happened. I spend time I could be reading participating in on-line discussions, connecting with friends, and playing games. The good news is the games are generally good for the brain. I'd be stretching it to say I get in an average of 30 minutes per day reading. Some days, embarrassingly, I don't pick up a book at all.
This reading schedule is going to change once school starts. I am going to start a reading contest with my students. Once I find out where I will be working and what types of reading programs the school participates in I will decide how to do it. During my student teaching year I challenged the students to get more AR (Advanced Reader) points than me. That was really fun and kept me reading, but I was pretty limited to children's and young adult novels.
The problem with any of these challenges is that they make me feel miserable about reading. (That's actually one of my complaints about AR, but I won't get into that.) Either I have to read to get the challenge done and it becomes stressful or I have not met my goal which is quite frustrating. I finally just gave up on that. I read when it is enjoyable and when I feel I can relax enough to get lost in the story.
3 comments:
I once read through the entire young adult novel section of the library (very small town library)and now, my goal for the summer is just to READ. I got a Nook for an end of the year gift from my kids at school, so I've been using that, but it's just not the same as holding a book in your hand. The upside is that I can read in bed when the hubs is already asleep! btw--my first graders LOVE AR and it really motivates them to read!
I think goals are good to make but realistic ones when it comes to anything, weight loss, reading, exercise, etc. I know a lot of people take on the challenge of reading the Bible through in a year and then they get bogged down and stop reading it. I often discourage people from doing that and say just read a chapter or two a day; might take longer than a year to get through it but that's okay. Same with reading; some seasons of our lives we have more time to read, other seasons not as much, but the fact we still enjoy reading is a good thing, I think :)
betty
I know what you mean about the AR points. My kids like to read and do so often but they hate having to read the books in their AR level and the ones for prizes. As long as they are reading something appropriate they shouldn't be forced into this.
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