THE READ-ALOUD AND READING ROLE MODELS BOOST LEARNING “Reading aloud with children is known to be the single most important activity for building the knowledge and skills they will eventually require for learning to read.” —Dr. Marilyn Adams, Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning About Print
KEY FINDINGS
> > The American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP) recommends that pediatricians encourage parents to read aloud daily, beginning as early as six months of age (2014). Dr. Pamela High, lead author of the APP policy explains the aim: “… Those 15-20 minutes spent reading with a child can be the best part of the day. It’s a joyful way to build child-parent relationships and set a child on the pathway to developing early literacy skills.” > > “A joyful relationship to books is part of what it means to be healthy” (Needlman, 2014). > > “Having reading role model parents or a large book collection at home has more of an impact on kids’ reading frequency than does household income” ( Scholastic Kids and Family Reading Report , 2013; Graeper, 2014; Hailey, 2014). > > Lisa Pinkerton (2018) explains the transformative power of the read-aloud: “As students move through experiences with literary texts, they forge links between the literature they experience and their own lives ...Walking in the shoes of characters with experiences unlike their own can help to expand students’ understandings of what it means to be human, building empathy for others.” > > Reading aloud increases your child’s vocabulary and attention span. Additionally, reading aloud to your child is a commercial for reading. When you read aloud, you’re whetting a child’s appetite for reading. A child who has been read to will want to learn to read herself. She will want to do what she sees her parents doing. But if a child never sees anyone pick up a book, she isn’t going to have that desire (Miller and Sharp, 2018; Laminack, 2016; Trelease, 2013; Massaro, 2016).
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CHAPTER 5: TEACH 6 FAMILY LITERACY
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