Dr. Diana Sharp served as the reading consultant for ItzaBitza and ItzaZoo. Her website is www.dianasharp.com.
Unlike the Las Vegas slogan, what happens in first grade doesn’t stay in first grade.
Reading in First Grade Matters
!
A first grader who is frustrated by reading and ends the year with reading failure has an 88% chance of being a poor reader at the end of fourth grade (Juel, 1988, http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=1989-17189-001&CFID=3005197&CFTOKEN=31484648).
Reading failure in first grade matters – a lot. And researchers at the University of Maryland are helping us to understand just how deep the effects on reading motivation could be four years later.
No Motivation to Read at Home? You Might Have a Low Achieving Reader
In a study published last year (Guthrie, Coddington, & Wigfield, 2009, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2786079/?tool=pubmed), researchers interviewed 245 fifth grade students about their reading motivation. They used questions like:
How often do you think, “I don’t want to read this”?
Do you read as little as possible?
Can you figure out hard words when reading?
Can you recognize words easily when you read?
Do you like it when books make you think?
Do you enjoy reading interesting books even if they are hard?
Do you try to get out of reading books for school?
They also looked at children’s scores on several different types of reading skill tests. And they found that the reading scores could best be predicted by looking at the amount of positive 
attitudes children had about reading and the amount of negative, or “undermining” attitudes children had developed about reading and about themselves as readers. The lowest achieving readers saw little reason to enjoy reading at home, so they never chose to do it when given a choice. They had low levels of “positive, intrinsic motivation.”
But there was more: these children also actively avoided reading, even in school where they didn’t have the freedom to choose other activities. They had high levels of “negative, undermining motivation.”
There is NO Quick Fix to Reading Problems
That’s why it’s not so simple to “fix” reading problems as children get older. You can’t just give children practice on the skills they need and then find books about things they’re interested in and think that everything is going to be OK. These children likely have developed “undermining” attitudes and habits of avoiding reading that need to be addressed or they’ll continue to avoid reading – often by “faking” reading – and never get the amount of reading practice they need. With luck, future research will help us better understand how to turn that kind of avoidance around.
Early Success in Reading is Critical
For now, the message is clear: it’s really important to keep children from developing those avoidance attitudes in the first place. Let’s give them as many experiences of being successful in reading – and enjoying reading – as we can. And especially if you see your early reader start to actively avoid books, don’t give up: try the kind of failure-proof support and fun that the Itza reading games offer to nip those undermining attitudes in the bud.
