Ms. Kelly’s Blog
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From the Lower School Principal, Betsy Kelly
Summer Reading 2013
Summer provides many opportunities for reading, and the wonderful characters
waiting to be discovered in your child’s books will do far more than entertain.
They will shepherd your children through small rehearsals
for life and show them ways to act as their best or worst selves. They
will deepen your children’s empathy, kindle their curiosity and build awareness
of the world far outside the Bullis community.
Research by Richard Allington and others highlights
correlations between reading and academic success,
while research from the National Endowment for the Humanities links reading with high degrees of civic and cultural engagement. People who read
frequently perform better than average in school, attend plays and sporting events more often and even vote and volunteer more frequently than non-readers!
The habit of
reading for entertainment, like learning how to ride bike, requires patience and practice, and it only becomes pleasurable once all the separate skills become fluent and integrated. Please approach
your child’s literacy as a
form of entertainment that needs plenty
of enjoyable practice. Consider too, all the enrichment opportunities available: read aloud at breakfast or after dinner, rent or purchase a Nook or a Kindle and load it with books, show your child how to load audiobooks from the public library or on a cell phone, attend plays, listen to books while traveling, or read together as members of a local book club.
Many parents find that book conversations open a fascinating window into a child’s emotional development. Parents discover what frightens or worries their children, and they get a chance to hear the big questions children ponder, such as: How do you
know when someone is a true friend? Why do adults act the way they do? How is conflict resolved? They also discover what brings
their children joy and what makes them laugh!
As
a busy parent, let yourself off the hook by realizing you don’t need to read the
books your child reads, just be poised to ask a few basic questions such as: What is
happening in your book? What seems really unfair? Which character is most like you?
We would
like every child to read between 45 minutes and an hour each day this
summer. Bullis families will receive individualized summer
reading lists from the Lower School team and we encourage all families to join
in the wonder of reading!
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