30 MIN EVERYDAY - PERFECT SCORE ON ACT EXAM

My blogs are going to be coming from three main sources: Jim Trelease's "The Read-Aloud Handbook, 7th edition, The Power of Reading: Insights from the Research, 2nd edition by Stephen Krashen and my own experiences as a Children's Reading & Writing Teacher. We parents, teachers, and administrators have to realize the best mehod of teaching a child to read is to have them spend their time actually reading with less time spent on skills, work sheets, phonics and testing.

This story is told by Jim Trelease about Susan & Tad Williams. They had two sons Christopher and David. Christopher took the ACT Exam in 2002 along with 4,000 other students. Out of those 4,000 taking the exam only fifty eight students got a perfect score of 36. When word got out that this kid, Christopher from Russell Kentucky (population of only 3,645) had a perfect score the parents were hit with questions about what Prep Course had he taken. He had not taken any high powered Prep Course. His parents had merely started reading to him for 30 minutes every night since he was a baby and continued long past the time he could read to himself.

A Quote from Jim Treleases book, "She and Tad just read to them---sowed the sounds

and syllables and endings and blendings of language into the love of books. Eaach boy

easily learned to read---and loved reading, gobbling books up voraciously. Besides

being a family bonding agent, reading aloud was used not as a test prep as much as an

'ensurance' policy--it ensured the boys would be ready for whatever came their way in

school."