Spend at least ten wildly happy minutes every single day reading aloud. Read at least three stories a day: it may be the same story three times. Children need to hear a thousand stories before they can begin to learn to read. Read aloud with animation. Listen to your own voice and don’t be dull, or flat, or boring. Hang loose and be loud, have fun and laugh a lot. Read with joy and enjoyment: real enjoyment for yourself and great joy for the listeners. Read the stories that the kids love, over and over and over again and always read in the same ‘tune’ for each book: i.e. with the same...

“We are not only what we read,” says the developmental psychologist, Maryanne Wolf, “We are how we read.”  She made this statement with reference to Deep Reading – the sustained and undistracted reading of a book. In fact, her argument is that deep reading is indistinguishable from deep thinking. It’s certainly something to ponder on in the age of micro attention spans. Attention Span of a Goldfish No longer can this phrase be used as an idiom. The day of reckoning is here. The average human attention span has dropped to 8 seconds, barely distinguishable from that of goldfish which are believed...