Walt Disney once quoted “There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.” Books provide a wind Why is reading important for students?
ow into the world of inventiveness, creativity, and resourcefulness. A book, in its purest form, can simply be described as a sea of words on pages. These words give meaning to anything and everything, be it living or nonliving, fictional or non-fictional, emotional or materialistic.
Stories become an integral part and a driving element of our lives as they provide an insight into the history, mythology, science, our beliefs, our aspirations, possibilities of our future, and the list goes on.
It is a fundamental yet essential aspect of a human’s life as it helps us to find and convey information. Reading is important for children as it nurtures their minds and plays a very important role in defining their personality.
One can never run out of sources, especially books, to gather knowledge. Apart from the importance of reading, the habit of reading has numerous advantages of which, the important ones are mentioned below:
● Improves / Enhances concentration: Reading books boosts a child’s concentration level which helps them in the long run by making their minds sharp.
● Improves Memory: Continuous reading habit helps children to improve their memory and help them retain the information and details of the story for a longer period.
● Brain Exercise: The more they read books regularly, the more their brain exercises and therefore, better the learning
● Promotes Critical Thinking Skills: Reading stories, especially those which revolve around the mystery or thriller genre helps them visualize and critically analyze the character’s situation.
● Prosper Empathy: While reading books, children tend to create a bond with the characters which develops a feeling of empathy for those characters in them.
● Develops and Expands Language Skills: Books help children to develop critical language and enunciation skills which further not only enhances their vocabulary but also their ability to speak clearly and more accurately.
● A Good Source of Entertainment: Reading books are a good source of entertainment as they let children enter into a world of their creativity and imagination wherein, they can visualize scenarios the way they want.
● Develops a Good Self-image: Reading books initially boosts self-confidence which later helps children to develop a good self-image in front of their parents, teachers, and peers.
● Helps to Discover the Other Parts of the World: Reading a variety of stories belonging to different genres exposes children to a world composed of numerous cultures and ethnicities.
While it is important to keep children intact with their reading habits, it is equally important to assess whether a child is an active reader or a passive reader.
What is passive reading? When a child has technically because they have to but do not absorb anything from the read text. He/she tends to just re-read the same passage multiple times with no intention of understanding it or making sense of it. Primary reasons for passive reading could be lack of interest or concentration.
What is active reading? When a child reads the story with concentration and interest, they are not only able to understand the concept of the story but also summarise it in their own words. With an open and discerning mind, they read with a more critical outlook, and they take more time to consider the meaning of the things they read.
In today’s world, every educated individual knows and understands the importance of reading for students. The knowledge acquired from reading books makes a student intelligent as well as smarter.
The knowledge gained tends to stick in their minds for a long period when they read books with immense excitement. In addition to this, reading stories has social benefits too as it helps children to form friendships through shared interests by discussing these stories.
Reading is the foundation of all academic subjects, such as History, Mathematics, and Science, and without reading and comprehension skills, children struggle to achieve academic success. Not only this, with reading comes the experience and habit of elocution of stories.
Apart from these, the benefits of reading books for students include improvement in their speaking skills which promotes interaction among students.
Children from an early stage of their life have the habit of listening to their parents. Therefore, when parents encourage their children to read, the child tends to progress at a much faster pace. In schools, teachers promote good reading habits in students through introducing creative ways to do the same.
For example, instead of the teacher reading the story out loud, they tend to allocate roles to children and then ask them to perform a role play which not only engages children in the story but also improves their enunciation skills.
In schools nowadays, teachers tend to give comprehensive passages to students in their exams to analyse their comprehensive skills. Children who are not exposed to comprehension sessions at the early stages of their life find it difficult to understand written material at the subsequent stages, let alone answer questions related to it.
As a result, kids lag when guardians fail to understand the importance of reading comprehension. Therefore, parents and teachers must introduce the concept of comprehension to the children by giving them small passages to read and then asking questions related to it.
The ability to read fluently is also an important part of reading comprehension, as readers who spend too much time decoding words often lose their understanding of what they are reading. By teaching them these basics, students can develop a strong foundation in comprehension. Apart from this, there are a lot of other benefits of reading comprehension for students.
Reading books is not only limited to academics as they help children grow, evolve, inculcate important values like morality, and empathy, expand their vocabulary, increase social interaction, and most importantly, become good people.
GIIS Bangalore is a good example where teachers explain to their students the importance of reading. International Schools in Bangalore and Schools in Sarjapur road have teaching methods that make students inquisitive book readers. It is through reading that children can find compassion, explore and learn.
However, it doesn’t happen instantly and automatically. One has to be nurtured in order to develop a well-rounded personality.
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Mr. Ashwani Kumar Saxena, Principal GIIS Whitefield is a passionate educator and an efficient school administrator with a rich experience of 28 years. His qualifications include MSc (Chemistry), MSc (IT), PGDCA, MBA (School Management) and a bachelor’s degree in education. He has visited some of the most reputed national & international educational institutes including Cambridge University, UK. He is accredited by University of Cambridge, UK to conduct Computer Science assessments. He holds a Residential CIE certification from Robinson College, Cambridge, UK. He is also an active Inspector of Schools to grant affiliation.
Having profound experience in the field of education, he has worked with various reputed schools pan across having national and international curricula including CBSE, ICSE, CIE and IB, holding important key profiles like School Administration, Curriculum Research & Development and has designed the School website, ICT based tools for teaching aids, academic audits, assessment techniques, resource management, data analysis & visualization, development of ERP as a multipurpose communication portal for Management, Staff, Student and Parents.
He believes that EDUCATION ILUMINATES WHAT LIES LATENT IN AN INDIVIDUAL, and educational institutions are the sanctuaries that guide the students to the sea of knowledge, skill, technique and information that prepares them to be global citizens of tomorrow.