“Mum, Dad, do I have to?” If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone. One of the most frustrating things in parenting is trying to get kids enthusiastic about something they don’t feel like doing, whether that’s eating vegetables, picking up their toys, helping around the house, or doing homework. If reading is one of the things that your child doesn’t enjoy, that can cause problems for them in their classrooms, which means there will be even more fighting and complaining when it comes time to do homework and study throughout the school year. Since there’s a definite link between reading skills and school success, helping children learn to enjoy reading is important.
In the UK, the National Literacy Trust has taken this to heart, and has partnered with the Premier League to promote good reading habits. Sports events and athletics stars are great ways to catch a kid’s interest, and once they get interested they’ll find it easier to keep working on something they once thought was “no fun.” The football players (soccer, for our US-based readers) have helped create a series of video challenges that prompt children to read more and improve their reading and comprehension skills. Not only that, but kids can win prizes by correctly answering the quiz questions associated with the short films. Footballers share their favorite books as well, and that encourages kids to go out and read those books, so they can be “just like” their heroes.
Parents are encouraged to get involved, as well as schools, though students don’t need to be directly associated with a school in order to participate. According to the National Literacy Trust, the reading-challenged students that took part in the Premier League Reading Stars program showed a fifty percent increase in reading skills, with those students significantly improving their reading ability in less than four months.
If you’re in the UK, you can contact the National Literacy Trust for more information on how to get your child involved, either alone or as part of a school group. But no matter where you are, you can use the information on the site to come up with new ways to encourage your child to read more – just pick a sports star or actor they idolize, and look for news clips or information about what that person likes to read or learn about. Enthusiasm is key when it comes to reading, and if you can show a child that you and the other adults in their life have fun reading, they’ll think it’s fun, too.
