Tom Nicholson: Encourage children to read over summer

While research shows reading makes people smarter, finding ways to convince your youngster this is the case and to encourage them to keep reading over the summer break can be challenging. Photo / File

School is out and weeks of holidays stretch ahead - what should you do about your child's reading?

While research shows reading makes people smarter, finding ways to convince your youngster this is the case and to encourage them to keep reading over the long summer break can be challenging.

Reading over summer has a lot of positive flow-on effects. It improves your general knowledge, vocabulary, and reading fluency. The big problem over summer is the well known "summer slide".

When school stops, learning seems to stop as well. We stop reading and the skills we have built up during the year start to fall away.

This reading slump over the summer can result in learners slipping back from three to six months in their reading age. Some researchers have calculated that if you multiply the summer slide - say, three months across 12 years of school - it adds up to three years of reading slide.

The summer slide seems to hit the low-achieving reader quite hard because they cannot afford to take a loss. But even the good reader can take a hit over summer because they need to stay at the top - and to do that you have to keep practising.

Reading makes you smarter. And you feel better about yourself. Reading novels helps to take you away from your current problems and anxieties and takes you into the lives and experiences of others who may be just like you, wanting to find meaning and optimism in life.

Reading also builds your skill base and helps you to achieve more in school as well as making you a happier person.

E-books and kindles are becoming increasingly popular, though still not as popular as reading the print versions.

Shaking beach sand out of a hard copy seems to be a fun part of the holiday experience but if you are thinking of Christmas with a difference a surprise present of an iPad or kindle might add that magic touch to encourage your children to read more.

Some tips for reading aloud to younger children during summer are:

• The first line of the story should sound really exciting.

• Change your voice according to the characters and the action.

• Pause at the end of sentences.

• Read the last line slowly and with feeling.

If your child prefers to read alone, source out from the local library or your bookshop interesting books that will appeal to them. Every book can be interesting but some classic titles are:

Picture books

Raymond Briggs - The Snowman, Father Christmas, Jim and the Beanstalk, Gentleman Jim
Bill Peet - Big Bad Bruce, Cowardly Clyde
Colin McNaughton - Boo!
Gavin Bishop - Rats!
Maurice Sendak - In the Night Kitchen
John Ryan - Captain Pugwash
Colin Thompson - The Short and Incredibly Happy Life of Riley

Novels

Theresa Breslin - Whispers in the Graveyard
Emily Rodda - Rowan of Rin
Robert Westall - The Machine Gunners
Vince Ford - 2MUCH4U
Jacqueline Wilson - Bad Girls
Joy Cowley - Wild Wests series; Hunter
Margaret Mahy - The Dark Blue 100-ride Bus Ticket
Terry Pratchett - Johnny and the Bomb
J H Rowling - Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
Roald Dahl - The Witches
J R Tolkien - The Hobbit

Tom Nicholson is Professor of Literacy Education at Massey University in New Zealand and a member of the Reading Hall of Fame. Some of his books are: Reading the Writing on the Wall, At the Cutting Edge, Reading Vocabulary, Reading Comprehension, Phonics Handbook, and The New Zealand Dyslexia Handbook.