Although the best predictor of reading success is the actual time students spend inside books, reading achievement is also influenced by the diversity of their reading. Avid readers are well acquainted with the joys of a good novel, but they also enjoy reading for a variety of purposes—exploring informational texts, absorbing information to perform a task, or sharing poetic texts through a range of social media (Beers and Probst, 2017). Sixth-grade teacher Donalyn Miller asks her students to read 40 books a year. Many of them read more than the required 40, and her classroom, bursting at the seams with her wrap-around-the-classroom-and-out-the-door library (Donalyn stores her overflow books in a storage closet across the hall from her classroom), fosters both avid reading and outstanding test scores. In The Book Whisperer (2009), which chronicles her dedication to classroom libraries, student reading choice, and independent reading, Miller describes an instance during one of her speaking engagements when she was asked by a skeptical audience member how she can justify to her principal the hours of class time she dedicates to students’ reading. Her answer was simple: she showed her students’ outstanding test scores. But she also explains: “Pointing to my students’ test scores garnered gasps from around the room, but focusing on test scores or the numbers of books my students read does not tell the whole story …You see, my students are not just strong, capable readers; they love books and reading.” In a classic 1988 study, “Time Spent Reading and Reading Growth,” Taylor, Frye, and Maruyama found that the amount of time children spend reading is significantly related to their gains in reading achievement. They asked 195 fifth- and sixth-grade children to keep daily logs of their reading at home and at school over a four-month period. They found that the amount of time spent reading during reading period in school contributed significantly to gains in students’ reading achievement as measured by reading comprehension scores on the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test (p<.039), while time spent reading at home approached significance (p.068). Brandon Dixon, a Harvard sophomore and winner of the Gates Millennium Scholarship, attributes much of his academic success to his voluminous reading. Brandon grew up in low-income household, the son of a single mother, who encouraged him to read daily and work hard. Dixon (2015) writes: When I answer the question, “How did you get smart?” by pointing to a long list of books I have read since I began devouring them sometime around second grade, [my peers] give me incredulous glances and sneer at the concept of “simple reading” being the key to academic success. It is a shame that they do not believe me, because when I examine my intellectual growth throughout the past 12 years, I credit more than 50% of my knowledge to what I gleaned while reading a book.
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VOLUME, STAMINA, AND AVID, INDEPENDENT READING
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