Children Can Strengthen Their Reading Skills
Passion for Literacy and Books Improves School Performance
As early as one year old, perhaps sooner, children begin to develop a vocabulary. Absent parental or adult intervention, that vocabulary can become limited and repetitive. Guided and enriched with the color, the poetry and the splendor of books, a child’s language can expand, deepen and strengthen.
Encourage a Love for Reading in Children
Parents and caregivers can encourage a love for books in children by using puppets to bring characters to life. They can also draw and color pictures of words from stories with their offspring to increase the child’s interest in reading. The pace, tone and volume of voice that parents and caregivers use when they read to children makes a story exciting.
The goal is to make reading fun, especially for children who are just learning how to read. Parents who do not have a mastery of written language can start with words that they do know and incorporate self expression into the story to move it along. Keep in mind that the passion that parents and caregivers infuse in their readings is what births an interest in literature in children.
Impact of Early Reading on School Performance
The 1997 National Survey of America’s Families found that 24% of the children who were read to or told stories less than three times a week lived in families whose economic levels were 200% below the national poverty level. In addition, only 57% of three to five year olds who were read to less than three times a week could read or pretend to read picture books while 77% of three to five year olds who were read to more than three times a week were able to read picture books.
Literacy and economic levels parallel. Parents who read to their children more than three times a week, and who instill strong literacy habits in their offspring, equip their children to excel academically and to earn higher incomes when they grow up.
Parents can read to their children half an hour before nap or bed time to ensure that they read to their children daily. Reading storybooks to children just before they go to sleep strengthens the child’s imagination, as people often dream about topics that were on their minds just before they fell asleep.
Keep the Luster for Literacy
If parents do not continue to make reading fun, children can lose interest in the art form by the time they reach nine or 10 years of age. Boredom for literature can set in.
Interspersing personal stories from their own childhoods into books that they read to their children adds realism to the tales. Reading becomes fun when parents take weekend trips to the library or bookstore with their children, and then stop off at a favorite eatery or park on the way home. To encourage dialogue around literature, parents can ask their children questions about a new book. Over time, the payoff is tremendous.
National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 1996-1999 reading assessments revealed that by the time more than half of the nation’s children turn 17 years old, their reading comprehension skills do not afford them the luxury of being able to read and understand complicated material.
Parents who read to their children more than three times a week increase the numbers of children who read and comprehend complex material. Other ways that parents can achieve this include setting a specific time to read to their children each day, making reading fun and asking their children questions about new books.
Children Love to Read
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