Should You Have Your Child Reread Books?

Occasionally, I hear from a mother who wonders if she should have her student reread a book by assigning the same book again the following school year or having him reread it during his free time. Usually,  the parent feels like her student didn’t “get it” and the concern is that there may be a gap or a lack of understanding if the child just moves on to the next book. I understand this, as I am fairly certain that there have been a few of these situations with my own children when a book didn’t seem to be really understood by the student.

My response is to not redo any book. Let me explain.

First, do make sure you are scaffolding the child into the book properly.  This could be a simple introduction to what he is reading and maybe the why behind it, as opposed to handing the student a book and just telling him to read it without the proper scaffolding, narrating, and subsequent exam.

Second, does having a child reread a book respect his personhood?  Do we not think that he won’t take from it exactly what he needs at this point in his life?  How would you feel if you read a book, did the work (narrating),  and  took a few thoughts away from it just to have someone say you didn’t get the things out of it that the teacher thought you should have? Could this be an example of not cooperating with the Holy Spirit as He educates your child?

Thirdly, if the feast is rich and vast, moving on will ensure fresh thoughts and ideas will come his way that might inspire him to dig deeper into subjects and books they have previously been acquainted with.  If they choose to reread on their own time, that is a different and wonderful thing than assigning it as a school book or even assigning it as a  free read.

Two years ago, I assigned my daughter Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time, a book that explores how a modern day Inspector from Scotland Yard becomes obsessed with a portrait of Richard III.   No scaffolding or anything, just handed it to her. (It was a rough year for many reasons.)  She didn’t like it, didn’t understand it and hasn’t picked it up since.  Fast forward to this year as I am preparing Richard III for our Shakespeare play this term. She notices the picture of Richard III I have on my planning sheet, mentions some book she  read that had something to do with this, finds it on my shelf and states that she needs to reread it, as it didn’t make much sense to her before. (Silent “YES!” from mom!)

Large room, big banquet, rich feast.  CM knew what she was doing.

Here we have Miss Mason talking about repeating lessons and how, if everything is in place, this should never be necessary if the student understands that the onus of the work is on him (the student), not us (the teacher). While books are not lessons, they are part and parcel of the lessons and ideas are ideas.

All school work should be conducted in such a manner that children are aware of the responsibility of learning; it is their business to know that which has been taught. To this end the subject matter should not be repeated. We ourselves do not attend to the matters in our daily paper which we know we shall meet with again in a weekly review, nor to that if there is a monthly review in prospect; these repeated aids result in our being persons of wandering attention and feeble memory. To allow repetition of a lesson is to shift the responsibility for it from the shoulders of the pupil to those of the teacher who says, in effect,––”I’ll see that you know it,” so his pupils make no effort of attention. Thus the same stale stuff is repeated again and again and the children get bored and restive, ready for   pranks by way of a change. – Volume 6, p. 75

So move on and keep the frequent changes of books happening in your household.  If you need a reason, Miss Mason gives you one here:

“One more thing is of vital importance; children must have books, living books; the best are not too good for them; anything less than the best is not good enough; and if it is needful to exercise economy, let go everything that belongs to soft and luxurious living before letting go the duty of supplying the books, and the frequent changes of books, which are necessary for the constant stimulation of the child’s intellectual life. We need not say one word about the necessity for living thought in the teacher; it is only so far as he is intellectually alive that he can be effective in the wonderful process which we glibly call ‘education.’ ” – Volume 2, p. 279

And please don’t overlook the fact that YOU need to be intellectually alive, too.

Warmly,
Nancy

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