Teaching Johnny and Jenny to read is more important than anything else in education, according to most teachers.
In fact, many of our country’s problems would be solved if all children were taught to love reading, as described in Creating a Literate Nation.
After all, reading is connected to all other subjects in school. If a child can’t read, he or she is doomed to fail during the formative years.
A wonderful group called the NCFL agrees that reading is important. 
Following are descriptions of upcoming NCFL family literacy programs, including The National Literacy Conference; Libraries and Families Awards; The National Day of Writing; and Fast Break to Reading, a motivational program involving professional female basketball players.
National Literacy Conference: The 19th Annual National Conference on Family Literacy has been scheduled for April 11-13, 2010, in San Antonio, Texas.
“At the 2009 conference, family literacy advocates Henry Winkler and Jan Goldstein inspired and energized the more than 1,200 attendees with their personal stories of how literacy changed their lives,” according to the NCFL website.
This conference brings together practitioners, philanthropists, volunteers, policy makers, and literacy advocates.
Fast Break to Reading: NCFL has joined the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) and Pitney Bowes to sponsor “Fast Break to Reading.”
The program encourages young students to track their reading minutes. The goal is for children to collectively reach one million minutes of reading time by the end of the basketball season.
Ten WNBA teams held local events where the basketball stars read stories and shared their own experiences with reading.
Participating teams are The Atlanta Dream, Chicago Sky, Connecticut Sun, Detroit Shock, Indiana Fever, Los Angeles Sparks, New York Liberty, Phoenix Mercury, Seattle Storm and Washington Mystics.
Libraries and Families Awards: NCFL will distribute $30,000 in funding to libraries that are pioneering literacy programs to families. Interested applicants can click here to sign up for more information.
National Day on Writing: The National Day on Writing will be held October 20. This is sponsored by the National Council of Teachers of English. Details for submissions are available on The Gallery of Writing Web site.
”Let’s create portraits that will be intricately painted through the notes, essays, drawings, poems and stories of parents, other caregivers, children, grandparents and other family members as they write to, for and about each other,” suggested the NCFL Web site.
For more information, see:
Comments
I absolutely agree that children need to learn a love of reading, beyond just the ability to read, but the desire to read. I just wrote an article on the end of Reading Rainbow, and what that means for children's literacy.
The only way to develop a love of reading is to properly teach children to read in the first place! Love of reading is secondary to developing mastery of decoding! Glad to hear about Henry Winkler. He is a dyslexic who had a very difficult time in school.
Basic literacy is the most overlooked cause of academic failure in this country. School districts spend thousands on consultants to "figure out" drop out rates instead of looking at the obvious!
Yes, but kids can learn to love reading long before they can "decode" by having adults read to them and being the example. The decoding comes easily and naturally for many after having many many books read to them.
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