Happygrl Posted March 17, 2017 Share Posted March 17, 2017 My daughter doesn't love reading and can be pretty resistant to it. She's a pretty slow reader. I'm having a tough time with how much reading she should be doing. If I'm choosing quality literature with her and doing analysis and such, how many books a semester would be "good"? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OneStepAtATime Posted March 17, 2017 Share Posted March 17, 2017 Which child? How old? How well does she decode out loud? How fluently does she read? Have you tried audio books with noise canceling headsets? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happygrl Posted March 17, 2017 Author Share Posted March 17, 2017 She's 12. She decodes pretty well and fluency is there but her reading is a bit below grade level. She's progressed a LOT in the last year. She's getting help through Lexercise (no dyslexia diagnosis but some mild markers). We do some audiobooks for her reading but not all of them. She listens to them frequently outside of school. She'll start her fifth literature book this year and one of those was an audiobook. I'm open to doing more that way. (Sorry for leaving out some important details the first time!) . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farrar Posted March 18, 2017 Share Posted March 18, 2017 I have one kid who is an absurdly slow reader. He doesn't hate books, but as a result, he can be grouchy about assigned reading. You already do audiobooks, so that's a good thing. My other suggestions are... * Assign reading time and try to let go of getting her to finish particular books very often. * Use short stories to dive into richer, harder language, classic authors, and practicing literary criticism. * Use movies to practice dissecting plot and theme. * When you do assign books, choose books that are short but rich. There are actually a lot of books like that for middle school. Some short (as in, they hover around 100-150 pages) but discussion worthy books for middle school include... - A Long Walk to Water - Tuck Everlasting - Sounder - The Giver - Call of the Wild - The House on Mango Street And there are also good graphic novels worth discussing for middle school age kids like... - American Born Chinese - March - This One Summer And there are novels in verse that are worth doing and those are really rich, but also really short, like... - The Crossover - Inside Out and Back Again - Out of the Dust 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OneStepAtATime Posted March 18, 2017 Share Posted March 18, 2017 Are you wondering how many books to assign for specific academics or for "pleasure" reading? Honestly, forcing her to read a lot of books if reading is not super smooth may backfire and make her hate reading. If she likes audio books, let her listen to audio books for more of her academics. If this is for "pleasure" reading I would not assign books. Let her pick her own pleasure reading (age/developmentally appropriate obviously). There is no one right amount. Each child is different. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Creekside5 Posted March 18, 2017 Share Posted March 18, 2017 In private school we complete about 5-7 books a year at the middle school level. Some are quite large-The Hobbit and some are shorter like The Golden Goblet. With these books we teach reading strategies, comprehension, literary analysis etc. The students are expected to read at least 20 min more a night of an independent book. Many students can move much faster and are voracious readers others do the bare minimum. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MerryAtHope Posted March 18, 2017 Share Posted March 18, 2017 I just had my kids read a reader for 30 minutes per day or minimum one chapter (unless they were super short--then I said 2 chapters), and didn't worry about how long it took to get through a book. We discussed what interested them about the book--what was going on, what the characters did, would they have done the same thing, that type of question. Since your dd is a struggling reader, maybe you should pick some easier books to let her pick up fluency and confidence. Also, do you have her read to you daily, at least a paragraph or two? That's an important tool so that you can keep helping her with word-attack skills for reading unfamiliar words, multi-syllable words, and so on. Since she has only read 4 books (plus 1 audio book) so far this year (I'm assuming school year--if you meant calendar year, never mind!), it sounds like either the books are too challenging, she needs remedial reading instruction, or she skips/avoids reading time a lot of the time. Possibly a combination of 2 of these or all three. It may take some investigation to see what's going on and what will help her most. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LMD Posted March 19, 2017 Share Posted March 19, 2017 I might go completely the other way and choose only a couple of books to slow read through. Take the pressure off and tackle something deep. Dd and I did this with Shakespeare, one page a day over a whole year - we discussed it everyday and she copied out her favourite lines. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tawlas Posted March 22, 2017 Share Posted March 22, 2017 My 10 year old dyslexic reader really wanted to do Beautiful Feets History of the Horse Unit Study and I don't have time to help her through/read aloud all those novels! I paired up audiobooks with the actual novel and she reads/listens to them together. I live in Canada so immersion reading on the kindle isn't available to me (SUCH a disappointment!) so this is my best bet. So either of those options are perhaps good for your daughter as well, at least some of the time? It has a lot of advantages for my daughter: She gets through books at a pace that keeps the story line coherent for her, she's encountering really great stories (and vocabulary) that would be otherwise unavailable to her, she can be proud of the books she's reading and not be held back by her decoding/fluency skills, can pursue an interest, and she's improving her fluency by reading along with a really great narrator. I've found the matching audiobooks either through my library or on audible.com. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hepatica Posted March 25, 2017 Share Posted March 25, 2017 I'll second the suggestion for short stories. I did this this year when I wanted my seventh grade DD to work with some more literary writing, but didn't want to spend an entire year slogging through one or two books. It was a big hit. We did a horror stories unit (The Lottery, Tell Tale Heart, The Broken Window, The Most Dangerous Game etc) and she really enjoyed it. We worked on learning to annotate, and discussed literary elements in the stories. It was quite successful! I don't think there is any "good" number of books necessary. Kids are different, books are different, you can't read them all. Reading is not the be all and end all of education. Read everyday in some purposeful way and call that good. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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