KEY FINDINGS
> > Building reading into children’s schedules and regularly bringing additional books into the home for children positively influences kids’ reading frequency (Mapp, Carver and Lander, 2017; Cunningham and Zibulsky, 2014). > > Children spend the vast majority of their time outside of school. Children who don’t read outside of school are far less likely to become proficient readers (Scharer, 2018, Harvey and Ward, 2017; Allyn and Morrell, 2016; Allington, 2012). > > Shirley Brice Heath (1983) noted that all it takes for a child to become a reader is time spent with one joyfully literate person. In other words, when children have access to books and are able to share them with reading mentors who love books and reading, those children are more likely to thrive as readers.
More to Know: The Presence of Books and Reading Role Models
A study titled “Family Scholarly Culture and Educational Success: Books and Schooling in 27 Nations,” published in Research in Social Stratification and Mobility , produced the astonishing claim that just the mere presence of books profoundly influences a child’s academic achievement. Conducted over 20 years, the research by Evans, Kelley, Sikorac, and Treimand (2010) surveyed more than 70,000 people across 27 countries. The authors report that their reading culture theory, backed by evidence, leads to the following predictions: • Parents’ participation in reading culture—which provides skills and knowledge—will enhance children’s educational attainment in all societies, regardless of the parents’ formal education and social class. • An increase in reading culture has the greatest impact on children from families with little reading culture to begin with. For families with less, where books are rare, each additional book matters the most: each additional book yields more “bang for your book” among the book-poor than among the book-rich. • A reading culture in the home matters more if parents are poorly educated, but matters less if parents are well educated. In other words, the greatest impact of book access occurs among the least educated and poorest families.
AUTHENTIC TEXTS AND TEXT COM- PLEXITY
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EARLY READERS HOME READING CULTU E
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