Our+Philosophy

"**IF THERE WERE A SUREFIRE WAY TO HELP KIDS BECOME MORE LITERATE, WOULD YOU IGNORE IT**? Free voluntary reading, or reading because you want to, is the kind of recreational reading that most mature readers do most every day. In schools, this approach is often called sustained silent reading, or SSR. Although some educators and parents think that students who read for pleasure are "merely enjoying themselves," there's a huge amount of research that supports the importance of free voluntary reading. In fact, research strongly suggests that free reading is the source of our reading prowess and much of our vocabulary and spelling development, as well as our ability to understand sophisticated phrases and write coherent prose. **The secret of its effectiveness is simple: children become better readers by reading**."

Excerpts from “Free Reading” by Stephen Krashen School Library Journal, 2006.

Simply put, what Mr. Krashen is saying is that reading works to improve reading skills. Shocking, isn’t it? Of course it isn’t. But for some reason many parents feel that there is some secret skill or trick that they (or their school) has failed to give their child which results in lackluster reading performance, reading reluctance, or downright hatred for reading. Not to oversimplify, as there are a multitude of factors that contribute to the dismal statistics on kids and reading, but parents and kids ought to give the simplest solution a try—reading for a little while everyday. Encouraging children to practice reading has been shown to ultimately improve much more than just reading proficiency. Numerous studies have documented improvement in comprehension, spelling, writing, vocabulary building and grammar skills.

As a library student, booklover, and mother of an 8 year old son, I have developed this program as a way to help parents help their children. It is a resource and a guide, as there are really no hard and fast rules (although you should definitely check out the Parental Guidelines page for some important information). FART should be fun--it is not meant to be a burden or viewed as more homework. If it turns into that--I can pretty much guarantee that it won't work!