As children are sent off to school when they begin preschool, you expect them to learn everyday at school up until college graduation. However, as much as they are learning, are they equally reading?
As a kindergarten through third grade student, you do get a chance to read books often since there are constant library trips and chances to take short quizzes on those short storybooks. However, as years pass and students move up grade levels, it seems like reading becomes a less important priority and students only read when it comes to books for an english essay.
For the most part, students only read about two or three books each year during their junior high and high school years. With that being said, it is rare for the teacher to simply give the students certain page numbers and send the students home to read because most students will choose not to read. With that, teachers either read aloud to the class or simply play the audio so half the students are barely following along and understanding what they’re “reading.”
Comparing elementary, middle, and high school, many children read a lot in elementary since most of their days are spent reading and writing. In middle school is when students learn to write more frequently and start to spend more time reading class books following along with the teacher. In high school, you would think it is when students never stop reading but since their schedules are filled with more important classes, reading books isn’t a thing on the list as much unless it’s out of the student’s personal time at home or out of school.
Students’ days at school are filled with classes that don’t include much reading like math, science, and electives of their choice where it’s more fun than actual learning. The only subjects where they do most of their reading is english and maybe history, two classes out of their seven a day.
These days, students’ school days revolve more around tests, notes, presentations, and essays more than reading a book or straight up reading. The closest thing students do is at most reading an article or a text of some point and analyzing it.
The more reading a student does has been shown to have a positive effect on increasing brain power. Reading regularly improves memory function that acts like a workout for the brain. The reading that students do in a school day isn’t enough for their brain to catch that workout. With the barely minimum amount time students spend reading at school could probably compare it to the time they spend on their phone. If a student’s school day consists of them being more on their phone than time spent reading then it shows how little a student reads throughout their school day.
Reading more frequently also gives students the skill of talking. Not talking as in everyday conversations but talking as in speeches. More reading allows students to grasp a better understandment of vocabulary and can have a positive impact on their future. Great reading and good use of vocabulary allows a person to have a better future in speech. Whether they want to become someone important or not. Public speaking can be used for many different reasons in the future. For example, a presentation for a job interview, a public speech, or even an important conversation. Speech is an important skill that students can have if schools give them the chance to do so.
Students should be given the time and chance to read more during school since only reading a book along with the teacher and class isn’t sufficient enough for the student’s future in education.
