Hi!

I am researching the reading habits of homeschooled students to see how it compares with their public school counterparts. Renaissance Learning published a survey of what kids are currently reading and it showed an average of 15 books read per year by elementary students and only 6 per year for high school. I'm convinced that homeschooled students read more than this.

Will you please take a minute to help prove my hypothesis?

Thanks!

My first response to this is, it depends on the child. I homeschooled 5 (3 graduated, 2 still homeschooling). I would have a different answer for each child, as they all have different reading preferences. I see you are asking about current homeschool students, so I could give an answer today that may be very different next month. Of the two I am currently homeschooling with, each is different by choice, and depending on what they are most interested in they will read more or less all the time. What year was the Renaissance Learning survey taken? This would matter to me as with any good survey, you want to compare apples to apples. How many families were part of the survey? Did they look at what was required reading in school and books read for pleasure outside of school? How much homework do they have to do in the school/schools which could take away from time that would have otherwise been used for pleasure reading?

Also, are you wanting what the child does naturally, or what may be expected/demanded of them (depending on the situation)? The choices above seem a bit vague. Are you looking at per week for a particular month, because we all know different times of year are busier with projects/exams/holidays/sports... which would change available time as well.

Another consideration would be what curriculum may or may not be being used. If you have a literature based one, the numbers will be much higher than if you are text book based. If you school at home (either online or boxed p.s. curriculum) vs. relaxed homeschooling vs. unschooling vs. structured homeschooling... will give different answers.

I don't mean to make this difficult, but there are so many different homeschooling styles and methods that will skew the results depending on who you ask (and even which year you ask).

Finally, you want to prove a hypothesis. To what end?

Not trying to be snarky or anything, just truly curious. I know that surveys and statistics can be made to fit a particular agenda, so I go into question mode when something like this comes up.

Yep, depends on the child. And since mine are grown, I cannot really answer this question.
For myself, now a grandma, I read lots of books out loud to my grandkids. And they see me read for myself.
I can read a book a night, but usually limit myself to 3 books a week. I do have other things I need to do, but love love love to read.

"Books" aren't the only type of reading, either. Last school year my little one read more than 1000 pages of text as a beginning reader - but it was only from 4 books. And, no, she couldn't read that in a week!

When summer came, the library had a summer reading program, where they counted books - she had to read 5 books for each prize. So, we picked short books to fit the program, and she read 20 in a month. (she's not 8 yet, so I coudn't answer your survey in any case)

My Mom was an avid reader but almost never read a book. Magazines, Newspapers, Medical Journals, Technical works, Encyclopedias, on and on - but very seldom a "book" as such.

I think the reading of x-number-of books a week is sometimes entertainment-based fiction reading. Non-fiction, religion, technical works often come in other formats.

Not to mention the rather substantial reading on the internet.

I googled Renaissance Learning and they don't look like a serious research agency - I cannot figure out exactly what they do, but I think they are selling something, and therefore their statistics might have an agenda.

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My teen LOVES to read. He's probably averaging 2-3 books per month (quite long selections). That's during our official school year. During the summer when he has much more free time, he blazes through books like crazy.

Anna, good point. Reading comes in many forms and some people don't read books but they read cookbooks, video game information, newspapers, captioning on t.v., business information, emails, text messages, computer anyything, magazines...... So many reading opportunities that add up and all of it counts.

Pam, I'm working with some other parents on developing a home-school literature curriculum for elementary students. Part of my initial research is in getting an idea of what reading habits look like among this age group. How many books would your child go pull off the shelf and read of his/her own accord because they were interested in the subject or story? (So obviously I'm not counting books that are part of assigned schoolwork).

Many studies have been done on public school student literacy, and I'm wondering whether the-#-of-books-read-per-year statistics apply to homeschooled children as well. I don't believe they do, judging from my own experience and the children in my current co-op group, but I'd like to find out.

It doesn't matter to me whether the books your child reads are fiction or non-fiction. I'm just looking for rough figures. And I"m guessing that most parents are going to find it easier to remember how many books each child read per week rather than per year. If I can get enough responses, I should get a fairly developed picture of reading habits across the spectrum, since as Pam rightly pointed out, from child to child reading habits vary widely.

As far as Renaissance Learning, they are only one source that I've looked at but their numbers are matching what I've read in scholarly journals on literacy among elementary students. Their 2010 study included over 7 million children.

Thanks to all of you for taking the time to respond.