One blog that I read professionally is by Dr. Kimberly Tyson. She wrote this blog back in March. I hope that you find it as informative as I do.
Last month Scholastic
published the State of Kids
& Reading ReportTM which provides a glimpse
into the current state of young people and their practices around independent
reading. They interviewed parents and kids about behavior surrounding reading
for fun. In this post, I’ll summarize some of the key findings.
We know that reading
matters. The simplest way to build a broad and rich vocabulary is
through reading. Why? Because the link between reading and vocabulary
is unequivocal.
Why Reading Matters
Reading aloud to
primary students helps introduce rich words within context that they won’t read
within leveled texts.
·
If students read 30
minutes a day, they’ll be exposed to 2,000,000 words in context.
·
After about 4th grade,
new words that students are introduced to are almost exclusively found within
written text.
In the Scholastic
report, it appears that parents have stronger attitudes about independent
reading / reading for fun than their children. Some of the findings are
summarized below.
The State of Kids
& Reading
·
Half of all children
ages 6–17 (51%) are currently reading a book for fun and another one in five
(20%) just finished one.
·
Both parents of
children ages 6–17 (71%) and kids (54%) rank strong reading skills as the most
important skill a child should have. Yet while 86% of parents say reading books
for fun is extremely or very important, only 46% of kids say the same.
·
Three-quarters of
parents with children ages 6–17 (75%) agree “I wish my child would read more
books for fun,” and 71% agree “I wish my child would do more things that did
not involve screen time.”
In exploring what
makes frequent readers, children varies widely in their reading. However, there
are certain predictors which I’ve summarized.
3 Predictors that Children
Ages 6-17 will be Frequent Readers
- · they will more likely rate themselves as “really enjoy reading”
- · they hold a strong belief that reading for fun is important, and
- · they have parents who are frequent readers.
Reading Aloud and
Choice
There are two
additional factors worth noting:
- · frequent readers ages 6-11 were those children who were read aloud to early and often, and
- · those ages 12-17 were more frequent readers when they are given choice of what to read independently at school, have ereading experience, a large home library, know their reading level, and have parents who are involved in their reading life.
- · and, 91% of kids of children ages 6–17 say “my favorite books are the ones that I have picked out myself.”
Reading at School
·
One third of children
ages 6–17 (33%) say their class has a designated time during the school day to
read a book of choice independently, but only 17% do this every or almost every
school day.
·
Half of children ages
6–17 who read independently as a class or school (52%) say it’s one of their
favorite parts of the day or wish it would happen more often.
·
School plays a bigger
role in reading books for fun among children in lower-income homes. Sixty-one
percent of children ages 6–17 from the lowest-income homes say they read for
fun mostly in school or equally at school and at home, while 32% of kids ages
6–17 from the highest-income homes say the same.
eBooks
And, one final note,
although we sometimes think that all text is moving to eReaders, the findings
about what children prefer are interesting (and not surprising to me).
·
While the percentage
of children who have read an ebook has increased across all age groups since
2010 (25% vs. 61%), the majority of children who have read an ebook say most of
the books they read are in print (77%).
·
Nearly two-thirds of
children (65%)—up from 2012 (60%)—agree that they’ll always want to read books
in print even through there are ebooks available.
Thanks, Scholastic for
this interesting and informed report. Read the full report here.
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