Expanding Minds; Stretching Expectations

It is my hope that your children are coming home more eager to read than maybe they've been in the past. We had a talk today about choosing proper books for their reading level. This can sometimes be daunting, because so many kids want to pick up books that look cool on the outside, but are just too difficult on the inside. Sometimes the problem is vice versa.

This took me back to the fact that when I started karate, I was a gold belt. Some of the same kids that I taught in school at the time were already black belts. I have to admit that at the time, I felt a little awkward with that, despite my outward bravado. The point is that I just wasn't ready to be a black belt. I hadn't learned everything yet.

In the same manner, some of the kids are simply more experienced readers than others. I told the kids that there is nothing wrong with reading an "easier" book than a big thick slab of a novel if they're not ready to be reading the novel yet. They have to read the lower-level books before they can be ready for anything harder. And if they can read enough of those books to the point where they start to get too easy and predictable, then they will be ready for the next step or two up. Kind of like moving on to my orange belt, my green belt, and so on and so forth.

I told the students that now I am a second degree black belt, working toward my third degree black belt. But it wasn't always that way. I read books now that are far harder than anything I would have even wanted to read in seventh or eighth grade. But I love reading now, and I even love reading books about subjects about which I know absolutely nothing.

And still, I find that when I go back and read I Was a Rat or The Giving Tree or Encyclopedia Brown at this age for school, I still discover new things I never noticed at that time.

Relating back to karate, I went back and reviewed the five rules of stealth for my sparring (how I wish it had a cool name like the five hands of the tiger) and found that I was able to get a lot more out of it than I did when I was an orange belt. It was a necessary building block to get me to where I am now, and how much more I'm able to get out of it than I was at the time.

Ask your child to connect what they have read to the world around them and to their past experiences. Ask them about what they're reading. When they're done with their 20 minutes of reading each night, ask them to summarize what they have read to you. They should be eager to share what they've read. If they're not, it may be time to move onto another book, or even up or down a level.

Remember what it was like the first time you read something that made your brain feel expanded from where it was before. This is what I want your children to go through, not only this year, but together we can set a starting point for the rest of their lives.

Happy Monday!