Why Read Fiction?
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Here is a 3 minute YouTube clip How fiction makes our brains better. It shows how different areas of the brain are influenced by reading fiction.
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Vanessa Collins - Just Read
Teachers' perceptions of the benefits and challenges of a whole-school reading for pleasure program. |
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Developmental Bibliotherapy in Young Adult Fiction: Why Teens need books now more than ever. (National Education Summit) Click on the image above to read the article.
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While students can borrow biographies and some non-fiction texts during WIRED we encourage boys to borrow fiction as much as possible. The popular author Neil Gaiman comments on the importance of reading fiction in his article “Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming”:
"Fiction has two uses. Firstly, it's a gateway drug to reading. The drive to know what happens next, to want to turn the page, the need to keep going, even if it's hard, because someone's in trouble and you have to know how it's all going to end … that's a very real drive. And it forces you to learn new words, to think new thoughts, to keep going. To discover that reading per se is pleasurable. |
Once you learn that, you're on the road to reading everything. And reading is key. There were noises made briefly, a few years ago, about the idea that we were living in a post-literate world, in which the ability to make sense out of written words was somehow redundant, but those days are gone: words are more important than they ever were: we navigate the world with words, and as the world slips onto the web, we need to follow, to communicate and to comprehend what we are reading. People who cannot understand each other cannot exchange ideas, cannot communicate, and translation programs only go so far.
The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read, and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity. And that means, at its simplest, finding books that they enjoy, giving them access to those books, and letting them read them…
And the second thing fiction does is to build empathy. When you watch TV or see a film, you are looking at things happening to other people. Prose fiction is something you build up from 26 letters and a handful of punctuation marks, and you, and you alone, using your imagination, create a world and people it and look out through other eyes. You get to feel things, visit places and worlds you would never otherwise know. You learn that everyone else out there is a me, as well. You're being someone else, and when you return to your own world, you're going to be slightly changed.
Empathy is a tool for building people into groups, for allowing us to function as more than self-obsessed individuals."
Sorry for the long quote but Gaiman makes the case for fiction so well.
As part of a fortnightly WIRED session students have the opportunity to select and borrow books and then consolidate their reading skills during a sustained silent reading session.
In order to further your son’s reading habits and increase his brain power, please encourage him to read regularly as part of his homework regime.
The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read, and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity. And that means, at its simplest, finding books that they enjoy, giving them access to those books, and letting them read them…
And the second thing fiction does is to build empathy. When you watch TV or see a film, you are looking at things happening to other people. Prose fiction is something you build up from 26 letters and a handful of punctuation marks, and you, and you alone, using your imagination, create a world and people it and look out through other eyes. You get to feel things, visit places and worlds you would never otherwise know. You learn that everyone else out there is a me, as well. You're being someone else, and when you return to your own world, you're going to be slightly changed.
Empathy is a tool for building people into groups, for allowing us to function as more than self-obsessed individuals."
Sorry for the long quote but Gaiman makes the case for fiction so well.
As part of a fortnightly WIRED session students have the opportunity to select and borrow books and then consolidate their reading skills during a sustained silent reading session.
In order to further your son’s reading habits and increase his brain power, please encourage him to read regularly as part of his homework regime.
