ENTRY POINTS TO LITERACY Research documents the importance of having multiple text types in early childhood settings (Duke, 2007), indicating that students can benefit from a classroom resource such as Scholastic Magazines+. Types of text that are crucial to expose students to from an early age include narratives that have characters, settings, events, problems, and solutions, as well as informational, or nonfiction, texts that convey information about the natural and social worlds. Even the youngest students need to acquire the skills to read and understand these different types of texts, and accessing a variety of such texts can help make reading more interesting to students. Readers of all levels can find magazines to be an especially appealing entry point to reading and learning. Classroom magazines provide extra supports for reading comprehension such as color coding, pictorial depictions, and the repetitive use of target vocabulary, all of which can help improve accessibility for readers (Morrow, Rosen, & Dunston, 2006). Furthermore, pictures and graphics that accompany magazine articles may scaffold comprehension for striving readers, thus reducing pressure to read from a challenging traditional classroom text. Students can select articles that are accessible to them while keeping pace with classmates who might select articles at other reading levels (Morrow & Lesnick, 2001). Magazines also tend to feature shorter articles on high-interest topics with dynamic visuals—all features that can help students develop identities as readers (Gabriel et al., 2012b; Morrow & Lesnick, 2001). For students of varying reading levels and interests, magazines can support their entry into reading in different ways. Magazines allow students to scan through content to find articles suitable to their reading level, eliminating the risk of embarrassment from abandoning the entire text because it was too challenging. Students can choose to read magazine articles on familiar topics for which they already possess some background knowledge and relevant vocabulary to help support their reading comprehension and fluency (Gabriel et al., 2012).
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SCHOLASTIC RESEARCH & VALIDATION
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