We all know how important it is to read to young children before they have started school, but what about reading to your grade-school age children or even older? The national Commission on Reading stated reading aloud is “a practice that should continue throughout the grades.” In a 1990 survey done in Connecticut schools only 8% of students in grades 4 through 6 were read to the previous evening. Yet the benefits of reading aloud to your child, even though they can read to themselves, are immeasurable.
According to Jim Trelease, author of “The Read Aloud Handbook”, when you read aloud to your child you accomplish four main things:
· Your child associates reading with pleasure
· Background knowledge is gained
· Vocabulary is built
· You provide a reading role model.
Associating reading with pleasure
As human beings we do things that bring us pleasure. As children grow older they are required to do more and more reading for learning purposes. Reading is associated with work instead of pleasure. My husband is an example of this. He read in school only when required, and has only read one novel in the nine years we’ve been married, which he read on a plane while traveling. When we read aloud to our children we are teaching them that reading is pleasurable.
Background knowledge is gained
Studies have found that until about 8th grade children have a greater listening vocabulary than they do reading vocabulary. Which means a child can listen to a book that they could never read themselves. A first grader can enjoy a fourth grade level book. Every time a book is read a child learns something they didn’t know before. You can do anything and go anywhere at any time in a book. Whenever my husband and I disagree on historical or cultural information I am usually right. The reason is simple, from the time I was young my parents read to me. Then I read to myself; as a teenager I read 3-5 novels a week. I still love to read. I learned a lot from reading even though most books I read were fiction books.
Vocabulary is built
Most conversation is simple consisting of only 5,000 words, another 5,000 words are used occasionally. Vocabulary is built by learning the “rare words”. These words are found in books. As the child’s listening vocabulary grows so does their reading, writing, and speaking vocabulary. A child who has never heard the word “humongous” used will never say it; therefore he will have a hard time reading it.
Providing a role model
Studies have proven that children usually grow up to repeat the behavior exhibited by their parents. If you read to your children, they will grow up to be readers. They will understand and believe that reading is pleasurable. They will learn the joy of losing themselves in the pages of a novel. The more you read to your children, the more they will like it. They more they like it the more they will read and the smarter they will grow.
*Look for upcoming blogs on these Read Aloud topics:
· How to read aloud to my infant/toddler?
· How to read aloud to my grade-schooler?
· Choosing a read aloud book.
· Parallel reading with my teen.