When we talk about slow reading, we're talking about whole books, not just passages. Slow reading means reading a smaller amount at a time, and stopping before we stop retaining what we read. It doesn't refer to physically moving your eyes more slowly over the page, which for some of us might become actually painful. Slow reading refers to amounts and increments, not about the physical process of reading.
Why read slowly? Certainly that's a question I asked in the beginning, because to read slowly did not come naturally to me at all. I am a natural devourer, and then a re-reader, of novels. For years I just didn't read philosophy, or academic history, or theology, or anything not narrative, because my brain just wouldn't do that kind of reading. That is, reading the way I habitually read novels for pleasure, I could not get a purchase on more idea-driven kinds of writing. I would slide my eyes over and have no idea what I'd just read, so I'd have to slide my eyes over again, often with much the same result.
But – and here's a recent example – I began reading Christopher Dawson's The Crisis of Western Education. I HAD to read a little bit at a time, and stop and think about it, and usually either copy a passage or write some notes to myself in my journal, or I didn't process what I had read. So it took me a year and more to get through that book, but I had a much greater purchase on what Dawson is saying, and far greater retention of his arguments in detail, than if I had read in my normal fiction/pleasure-reading mode. That was not the only book I had going at the time, by any stretch of the imagination -- I usually have a lot of books going at once. Novels I'll just read cover to cover and move on (or reread), but other things I will pick up, read a bit, put down and let what I read marinate, then come back some time later and read some more. And when I do that, especially if I do it meditatively, pay attention to the point when my mind begins to wander, and stop when that happens, I find that I carry far more of what I read with me, as part of my own thoughts. It makes sense to me now that you would want to pace yourself more slowly through a book whose ideas you mean to process and assimilate into your own thinking.
For younger children, say in the lower primary years, this would mean that you would focus primarily on the ability to narrate well something a couple of standard deviations above their normal independent-reading level, read aloud to them. They will typically narrate a smaller amount at a sitting with greater detail than they might narrate a longer stretch. So you're taking your time with a book like Our Island Story or This Country of Ours, stretching the book out longer, reading in smaller increments each time, and slowing the overall pace, so that each reading can be narrated well, and thus processed and assimilated. The opportunity to live with a book over a long period of time, too, instead of just slamming it down like a cold drink and moving on to the next thing, means that it will be retained, experienced, and connected with in far greater depth, with far greater meaning.
Slow reading certainly helps with dense, meaty, difficult books. This Country of Ours often constitutes a real stretch for first graders (and many families choose to wait until later to read this book), but in small increments, and persevered with, it's doable. Even when everyone loves a book and hates when the day's reading ends, slow reading still helps. Children might beg to read another chapter, and another, but after awhile the law of diminishing returns sets in, and it's just kind of flowing past, not necessarily taking hold as vividly as a smaller reading might. That is why, from the beginning, many books are scheduled to be read in small portions over a really long period, sometimes as long as two or three years.
By the time children reach upper primary, fourth or fifth grades, you're presuming basic fluency in reading, though of course mileage may still vary because of learning issues. By this level, though, typically the student is independently reading at least some things that are a a stretch to engage with, and/or don't immediately gratify -- I think the Famous Men books particularly fall into this category. They're more worthy, I guess, than they are fun. In early secondary, grades six through eight, really stretching reads might include The World's Story and Book of Discovery. By high school, if not before, many students are reading Churchill's History of the English-Speaking Peoples and other denser, sometimes more academic texts. These still qualify as living, but often presume an audience of adults, or at least undergraduates, and constitute a definite challenge for a student to engage with.
These are all books that children often don't "like" at first glance (or second, or third), because they're harder and not as immediately entertaining. So the student's response might be one of two things: either to bog down entirely and maybe refuse to read, or to run his/her eyes over the pages to get them over with and go on to something more interesting, thus not learning/retaining very much.
Your response as a mother might be, "My kid doesn't like this book. Let's find something more engaging." And that's an understandable response, because we want our children to be engaged with their reading. But it's one to interrogate a little before you act on it, because there is merit to asking a child to work to engage with something that's not gratifying right off the mark.
This is where, particularly, slow-reading becomes more obviously useful. It's easier not to glaze over or rush through something if you're reading a smaller portion and have time to let it soak in before you move on. And if you encounter resistance, it's easier to get someone to read a short passage without complaints than it is to get that person through a whole chapter. At the end of the day, that child might never love that book. BUT he/she will have learned that it IS possible to read that book and learn from it.
Obviously not every book is that heavy -- it's important to have a varied day of maybe one harder book with some more immediately rewarding ones. But even the "easier" books benefit from a slower reading. You could read Paddle-to-the-Sea in one sitting, for example, but the details sink in better if you take Paddle's journey a page at a time, at a rate of one a week. That way, you accompany Paddle on what really is a long and convoluted journey.
By high school, this kind of reading allows students to take on some quite challenging texts, to read philosophy and theology and engage with academic writing, all in a fairly heavy load -- and it's easier if it is a long-ingrained habit, rather than something you're trying to get somebody to do because you realize that he's just slid his eyes over a chapter in moral theology, and you ask him what he read, and he says, "Stuff . . . "
It also enables you to schedule a wide variety of books, to have many things going at a time, which helps the student not to hyperfocus on one book or subject, to the exclusion of everything else. I have one with a serious tendency to do this (part of the ADHD/Executive-Function-Skills picture), so with this child almost more than any of the others, I'm aware that I'm still working to teach him how to balance a number of elements without dropping them.
Now, these are all long goals, but I think they are the goals in slow reading. If you have a child still working on fluency in his own reading, then yes, I agree, I would leave that alone, especially since private/pleasure reading isn't narrated anyway – but I would approach anything read aloud for school as a slow read, as in **slow pace for the whole book **, as a way of beginning to build habits that will pay off in the very long term.
For younger children, say in the lower primary years, this would mean that you would focus primarily on the ability to narrate well something a couple of standard deviations above their normal independent-reading level, read aloud to them. They will typically narrate a smaller amount at a sitting with greater detail than they might narrate a longer stretch. So you're taking your time with a book like Our Island Story or This Country of Ours, stretching the book out longer, reading in smaller increments each time, and slowing the overall pace, so that each reading can be narrated well, and thus processed and assimilated. The opportunity to live with a book over a long period of time, too, instead of just slamming it down like a cold drink and moving on to the next thing, means that it will be retained, experienced, and connected with in far greater depth, with far greater meaning.
Slow reading certainly helps with dense, meaty, difficult books. This Country of Ours often constitutes a real stretch for first graders (and many families choose to wait until later to read this book), but in small increments, and persevered with, it's doable. Even when everyone loves a book and hates when the day's reading ends, slow reading still helps. Children might beg to read another chapter, and another, but after awhile the law of diminishing returns sets in, and it's just kind of flowing past, not necessarily taking hold as vividly as a smaller reading might. That is why, from the beginning, many books are scheduled to be read in small portions over a really long period, sometimes as long as two or three years.
By the time children reach upper primary, fourth or fifth grades, you're presuming basic fluency in reading, though of course mileage may still vary because of learning issues. By this level, though, typically the student is independently reading at least some things that are a a stretch to engage with, and/or don't immediately gratify -- I think the Famous Men books particularly fall into this category. They're more worthy, I guess, than they are fun. In early secondary, grades six through eight, really stretching reads might include The World's Story and Book of Discovery. By high school, if not before, many students are reading Churchill's History of the English-Speaking Peoples and other denser, sometimes more academic texts. These still qualify as living, but often presume an audience of adults, or at least undergraduates, and constitute a definite challenge for a student to engage with.
These are all books that children often don't "like" at first glance (or second, or third), because they're harder and not as immediately entertaining. So the student's response might be one of two things: either to bog down entirely and maybe refuse to read, or to run his/her eyes over the pages to get them over with and go on to something more interesting, thus not learning/retaining very much.
Your response as a mother might be, "My kid doesn't like this book. Let's find something more engaging." And that's an understandable response, because we want our children to be engaged with their reading. But it's one to interrogate a little before you act on it, because there is merit to asking a child to work to engage with something that's not gratifying right off the mark.
This is where, particularly, slow-reading becomes more obviously useful. It's easier not to glaze over or rush through something if you're reading a smaller portion and have time to let it soak in before you move on. And if you encounter resistance, it's easier to get someone to read a short passage without complaints than it is to get that person through a whole chapter. At the end of the day, that child might never love that book. BUT he/she will have learned that it IS possible to read that book and learn from it.
Obviously not every book is that heavy -- it's important to have a varied day of maybe one harder book with some more immediately rewarding ones. But even the "easier" books benefit from a slower reading. You could read Paddle-to-the-Sea in one sitting, for example, but the details sink in better if you take Paddle's journey a page at a time, at a rate of one a week. That way, you accompany Paddle on what really is a long and convoluted journey.
By high school, this kind of reading allows students to take on some quite challenging texts, to read philosophy and theology and engage with academic writing, all in a fairly heavy load -- and it's easier if it is a long-ingrained habit, rather than something you're trying to get somebody to do because you realize that he's just slid his eyes over a chapter in moral theology, and you ask him what he read, and he says, "Stuff . . . "
It also enables you to schedule a wide variety of books, to have many things going at a time, which helps the student not to hyperfocus on one book or subject, to the exclusion of everything else. I have one with a serious tendency to do this (part of the ADHD/Executive-Function-Skills picture), so with this child almost more than any of the others, I'm aware that I'm still working to teach him how to balance a number of elements without dropping them.
Now, these are all long goals, but I think they are the goals in slow reading. If you have a child still working on fluency in his own reading, then yes, I agree, I would leave that alone, especially since private/pleasure reading isn't narrated anyway – but I would approach anything read aloud for school as a slow read, as in **slow pace for the whole book **, as a way of beginning to build habits that will pay off in the very long term.