GETTING MORE BANG FOR YOUR BOOK: BUILDING IMPACTFUL HOME LIBRARIES For years, research has shown that the very existence of books in the home is correlated with student well-being, academic achievement, and future success. Additionally, we know that students who own their own books are more likely to value them (Clark & Poulton, 2011) and to read at or above grade level (Merga, 2015). But what should these home libraries include? We now have a nuanced understanding of how home libraries can yield the highest impact, including which books should be included in home libraries, how those books should be selected, and how many books make a measurable difference in the lives of students.
A WIDE VARIETY OF BOOKS
Just as we want children to eat the rainbow as they fill their plate with fruits, vegetables, and other healthy foods, we want children to read widely and have experience with a wide range of story book types, genres, authors, characters, and language (Cleaver, 2020, p. 27).
In their groundbreaking work, Nagy and Anderson (1984) identified an astonishing gap in vocabulary exposure for school-aged children, finding that a middle-grade reader who struggles to read might read 100,000 words a year, while a voracious reader in the same class might read as many as 50 million words a year. Those regular readers are wide reading —reading a variety of books at home and at leisure—and in doing so, building stamina and increasing their reading fluency (Fisher & Frey, 2018). Home libraries are essential for wide reading across numerous texts every day, allowing for different progress depending upon a child’s age (Torppa et al., 2020). • In early grades (K–2), reading achievement drives the volume of books read; children who are strong readers read more. During these years, home libraries make for good practice, building fluency and comprehension and ensuring that students think of themselves as good readers.
HOME LIBRARIES TOPIC PAPER 11
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