“Reading a good book in silence is like eating chocolate for the rest of your life and never getting fat.” By Becca Fitzpatrick
I always used to think, are we giving time to children to read the books silently. Are they enjoying it?
Throughout the day, children are engaged in some activity or other in the classroom, on the ground, in the art room, to concentrate and sit quietly, and reading makes the children calm down and think while reading.
Silent reading is mostly about reading for pleasure, and most of you have seen that those who read for pleasure have higher reading proficiency. Silently reading a book improves the text’s understanding as they are concentrating on reading rather than pronunciation. And, we picture the thought of the author. While we ask the children to read silently, we help the children develop and read faster, and they will be able to comprehend better.
So, we in our library started doing this activity in the assigned library blocks once in a while. We ask the children to be very quiet and select a book of their interest or liking, even if it’s a small book. Students are allowed to choose a place to sit anywhere as we have large windows and steps and a house tree in the library with an artificial grass patch wherever they feel comfortable to sit and read at least for 30 minutes very silently without any disturbance. In the last ten minutes, we ask them how the feeling was, and they used to come out like they were in some other world. Some children were so engrossed in reading that they didn’t want to get up and go to class. Next time when they come to the library, they want to read silently in a quiet corner. Once the students get used to reading silently with concentration, they like to read different genres. We also provide children’s magazines to read stories, poems, and puzzles from magazines in this activity. This program can be done with varying books of language and also with higher grades students.
(“Animed boy and girl reading book illustration”)
Significance of Silent Reading:
When we are instructing students, we should be clear about why we are practicing silent reading. In higher grades and later, when we mostly read long texts for a longer time, we require silent reading. My observation is that whenever this practice of silent reading is imbibed in the children in the early stage, the children start reading whatever is given to them in any form. Maybe it is a physical book or an online material.
Those students who read silently read a variety of texts, fiction or nonfiction. They stand and read, sit and read, read in a corner, and read wherever they find a place. They will not get disturbed by any distractions.
Benefits of reading silently –
- Silent reading improves students’ understanding because it helps them concentrate on reading rather than pronunciation. This practice also allows children to read faster and improve comprehension.
- Silent reading also helps develop reading skills for a purpose, as the focus is on understanding the content.
- This also helps students retain thoughts into their subconscious mind and use them in their daily lives.
The only limitation, which I can find, is when reading aloud, every word should be read and articulated effectively; however, when perusing quietly, the reader may skip words either purposefully or inadvertently and focus less on pronunciation.
In conclusion, later in life we read silently; we absorb the text more efficiently than reading orally. While reading silently we are not disturbing anyone around; that is one more added benefit. So, reading education materials is one of the essential early aspects of learning and being educated.
Reference –
Bilah, Masum. Significance of Silent Reading, 2015, www.theindependentbd.com/magazine/details/8098/Significance-of-Silent-Reading.
“Animed Boy and Girl Reading Book Illustration, Child Reading Learning Education Illustration, Children Reading, Love, Children’s Clothing, Heart Png.” PNGWing, www.pngwing.com/en/free-png-zjyhd.
By
Sucharita Rajeev
Chatrabhuj Narsee School
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