Kids and books go together

It’s always reassuring when the things you know in your gut and in your heart are just right are substantiated by empirical research data. We’ve always known it feels good to read to our kids. Those “together” moments for children and parents cross social, cultural and economic barriers. Books are plentiful and cheap.

Researchers have determined that one of the most constructive things parents can do, beyond keeping kids healthy and safe, is reading to and later on with them. Study after study shows that reading even to very young children helps them learn to speak, interact, bond with parents and eventually become early readers themselves.

Reading to and with kids who already know how to read helps them learn more and feel closer to the world around them and, we hope, become empathetic citizens of that world.

All parents talk to and with their kids, but reading to them provides a completely different language experience, especially for early learners. Conversation uses a kind of verbal shorthand, not full sentences, but the language in books, newspapers and magazines, where there are completely constructed sentences, is more complex, more linguistically sophisticated.

It is safe to assume that the child who hears more sophisticated words, even the words used by children’s authors, will have a significant advantage over a child who hasn’t heard or learned the meaning and uses of those words. So even though we read to our kids because it just feels good to snuggle up and enjoy a story together, research tells us that the benefits and advantages of reading to children go well beyond the emotionally satisfying aspect of the experience.

According to Kids and Family Reading, a report by book publishers Scholastic, three out of four parents who have children age five and younger start reading aloud before their child reaches his first birthday.

The Scholastic study found that the benefits of shared reading include enriched language exposure and the development of listening skills that are beneficial for cognitive development by activating brain areas related to narrative comprehension and mental imagery.

Research by Jim Trelease, the author of The Read Aloud Handbook, which some parents have called the “read aloud Bible,” suggests that we should not stop reading to and with our children just because they have learned to read independently.

Trelease makes a valid point in the experience of most primarygrade teachers when he says that the child who comes to school with a large vocabulary finds school a generally more reassuring experience than the child who comes to school with comparatively low vocabulary and relatively little familiarity or comfort with words. In addition, we know that in the early years of school, and certainly later on, much instruction is spoken.

From Kindergarten through second and third grades, many kids have not yet become fluent readers, but kids with the largest vocabularies have an automatic advantage because they understand more, if not most, of what the teacher is saying and what they are learning to decode on the printed page.

How does a child develop a large vocabulary even before school starts? It only makes sense that those children who are not only spoken to often but who are also read to most often will be the ones with the largest vocabularies.

The kids with less well-developed vocabularies don’t always get what is going on from the start, but as they advance through the grades and both spoken instructions and printed information become more complex, the challenges become greater.

So when a child has developed the skills of reading, what about asking him or her to read aloud?

While there are differing opinions about the value of having kids read aloud, there is clear consensus on one thing – reading aloud must be a positive, not a negative, experience. Nothing will turn a kid off reading faster than having them struggle and be embarrassed, especially in a classroom, with reading aloud.

That said, there are, the experts tell us, advantages to helping kids develop confidence about reading aloud if the experience is handled sensitively by a teacher or parent.

When children engage in repeated oral readings, their levels of fluency increase significantly; when children learn to read expressively their comprehension of what they are reading dramatically increases; and children who learn to read expressively are also learning about how the writer uses words to communicate the surface and deeper meanings of a text.

As Walt Disney, who knew a thing or two about developing imaginations, said: “There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.” — Geoff Johnson is a former

superintendent of schools

All parents talk to and with their kids, but reading to them provides a completely different language experience...