If you’ve been reading my blog, you might remember a long time reader, Dee, whose son was (operative word!) a reluctant reader.
She wrote me in 2012:
Hi, Mia!
Over the summer, I’m trying to spark an interest in history and social studies with Dylan. He’s going into fifth and finds the subject so boring. I’ll admit, the way they teach it is not exciting.
This past year, it was American social studies, mainly focused on regions. He came alive when we’d read the snippets of stories, like the one recently about a young girl moving with her family from the city to the prairie. So I was thinking of Willa Cather for that. But it could be about the Gold Rush, about pilgrims, about the Alamo, you name it. Anything history or culture related.
I envision us reading them together and I’ll definitely end up doing a lot of the actual reading.
“If a child can’t learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn.” – Ignacio Estrada
I wrote a post for her on 5th Grade Chapter Books To Make Social Studies Exciting but it didn’t help Dylan much.
image from The Friends of Tower Hamlet Cemetery Park
Over the years, I learned through the comments that she left, that she put Dylan into a summer camp called SOAR, a movement that teaches kids using nature as the classroom. She might have done this as he entered Middle School or perhaps the year after that. It really changed Dylan. This was a great learning environment for him and his self esteem got a boost. But still, he wasn’t reading for pleasure (like my son as well).
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