Reading is considered a positive habit that should be practised regularly at least once a day. As it has various merits, it is proven that the practice plays a very vital role in improving the linguistic skills of an individual. On the other hand, the habit doesn’t develop in a week or so. An individual requires to start reading from adolescence or childhood and maintain a routine.
One should be very smart to choose the right type of content that should be read. Professional readers often practice a strategy known as ‘genre switch’ where the genre of the content is switched after every book/novel is read completely. It is believed that this technique helps to increase the intelligence quotient (IQ) of the individual. This article revolves around the introduction, its benefits, the strategy to develop it as a habit, and a few tips and tricks that make reading a loveable experience for kids.
Merits Of Reading For Kids
According to the experts of languages, there are uncountable advantages that are associated with reading and comprehension. It majorly focuses on the linguistic skills of an individual as one is regularly learning new words and unique writing styles every day. Books are known as oceans of knowledge and information. Considering this online era increases the level of digital literacy in students. This segment of the article focuses on throwing some light on the merits of reading for kids below the age of 14.
- Linguistic Skills: It is believed that every average novel of at least 70 pages of content teaches around 35-75 new words to an average individual. Knowing the fact, we can be assured that reading helps in improving the linguistic skills of kids.
- Writing Skills: Just like books gives exposure to new words and terms, it also introduces the reader with new and unique writing styles as every writer writes in its rhythm. Therefore, it also helps in improving writing skills and styles.
- Concentration Level: It requires a person’s complete focus and attention towards the content in order to read effectively with a motive to grasp the knowledge. Hereby, this also helps in increasing the concentration level of the children.
- Imagination: Being imaginary is a skill that everyone requires to set the primary goals of life. It helps the students to develop realistic imagination skills as every reader has to imagine the incident that has been read to understand completely.
- Productive Consumption of Time: Digitalization in India has also lead a lot of students to spend most of their time on digital sources for It also helps the student to consume their free time of the day more productively
- Improved Grades: It has been noted and suggested by a lot of famous and popular educators that students who have developed a habit to read regularly show a hike in the graph of their annual academic grades.
- Brain Strengthening: Every complex cognitive activity that a child performs helps in strengthening the brain of the child in some or another way. It makes children perform deep thinking processes that are believed as great exercises for the brain.
Strategy To Develop A Reading Habit
As mentioned in the introductory segment of the article, the habit to read cannot be developed in a week or so. One requires to maintain a regular schedule of reading for a fixed period of time every day in order to find it interesting. This strategy is comprised of the three C’s – consistency, content, and, comprehension. All three aspects of the strategy act as moving gear that should be practised together to develop a habit.
- Consistency: The first C of the 3C’s strategy is considered as the primary aspect to develop the habit. One requires to be consistent and regular for adding this to their routine. It is suggested that anyone can make reading a part of their routine by practising it for at least an hour a day.
- Content: The choice of content should always be appropriate after considering the interests, age, and hobbies of the children. In easier words, a guardian should always choose the right kind of book, novel, article, or blog for their children after analyzing all the aspects related to it.
- Comprehension: It refers to the process of understanding what one is reading. Children below the age of 14 are often noticed reading aloud the content while they are not even understanding it. Therefore, comprehension is a very important part of the strategy as one should always know what he/she is learning about.
5 Tips To Make Reading For Kids A Loveable Experience
It can sometimes be boring to the kids as we are currently going through the era of digitalization and hereby, visuals create more interest. Students nowadays are very fond of informative visuals like animations, videos, and 3D pictures that are only available on digital sources. This final segment of the article represents some techniques that can help your children to create more interest.
- Online reading not only creates a good interest but also increases the level of digital literacy in the students. Among the various sources of online reading, Amazon Kindle is the one with the largest marketplace for online reading for kids. A few online learning platform offers academic material that can help the students with the same.
- Story reading has resulted to be a very meritorious and beneficial technique to encourage reading. Kids of age below 10 are very keen and excited to read imaginary stories because of their engaging storylines.
- Choosing the reading content with more visuals like photographs, infographics, SmartArt, and, diagrams are more advantageous to students as they represent more than words. Therefore, they encourage students to read more about the topic they’re learning about.
- There is always a cross-connection of real-life with reading. Guardians, parents, teachers, and educators should connect the incidents and events in the book with a few real-life incidents to make it more realistic and worth-believing.
- Reading in a library is the most traditional methodology of grasping knowledge and information. Back in the days when there was no internet, libraries were counted as the only search engines that were accessible to the students. Therefore, educators should schedule more student visits to the libraries.