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Reading nourishes kids, family while schools are closed

By Dawn Miller

Originally published as an op-ed in The Charleston Gazette Mail.

Worried about your child’s education while schools are closed? Here is some good news: If all you can do some days is read with your kids, you are doing great things.

We have known forever that reading to children improves their vocabulary. That’s not even half of it.

When we read to children, a lot of other cool science stuff happens. Some of it we can’t even see, and it wasn’t so well understood even a generation ago.

Starting with babies: When we read, sing and talk to babies, their brains literally form networks that prepare them to start reading by age 6 or so. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Dr. John S. Hutton, a pediatrician in Cincinnati, has recorded the effect on children’s brain scans.

The gist is, we are born with brain networks ready to learn certain things — to see and speak, for example. We have no ready-made brain network prepared to figure out the word c-a-t.

But as we read to children, show them the pictures, let them think and talk about what happens in the story and relate it to their own experience, the human brain organizes itself to do that task more efficiently next time. The more we do it, the more the brain insulates and strengthens these networks.

By the time children skip into kindergarten and first grade, all that reading instruction at school falls on very fertile ground. Children blossom into readers.

This is a turning point in their lives. Children who can read well tend to get better grades and test scores throughout school. They go further in school, are less likely to get in trouble with the law and have higher lifetime earnings. They even enjoy better health outcomes as adults.

Like I said, a turning point.

Even after children can read well on their own, they still benefit from being read to. First, they gain fluency by hearing good readers. If they have a chance to follow along, they can make even greater gains.

Second, children can hear and understand stories that are too difficult for them to read comfortably on their own. The experience draws them further along, toward more difficult texts, and they grow ever more skilled, and knowledgeable.

And then, there are the other benefits. Anyone at home feeling anxious? Worried? Acting out? A soothing solution is to slow down and share a story.

At the Children’s Hospital at West Virginia University, thanks to exceptional teacher Katie Ridenour, Read Aloud helped organize medical students to read to patients. The idea is to keep as much normalcy in their lives as possible, and to keep up with their education.

When we asked how it was going, there were several benefits, but we heard one anecdote we cannot forget. As a medical student read to an infant who had a very rapid heartbeat, the baby’s heart rate slowed to a relaxed pace.

If that happens to a very young, ill child connected to monitors that capture this information, how might it affect the rest of us who don’t have sensors and readouts to tell us?

Our classroom volunteers frequently say their Read Aloud time is the “highlight” of their week, the same word, from many volunteers, independently, over many years.

I can attest to that. Countless times, I had a rough day at work in the newsroom but, at the appointed hour, I dropped everything and showed up in class, book in hand. And I always came away refreshed. Relaxed. Refocused. In perspective. I would miss lunch, if necessary, but not that Read Aloud time. I joked then that it was like I had stepped out and petted a cat.

It may not have been a joke. An oft-cited 2009 report from the University of Sussex concluded that as little as six minutes of reading (for pleasure) reduced stress by 68%, better than anything else.

We’ve heard it from students, too.

“This is my favorite time of week,” a fourth-grader sighed to me one day when I arrived. “Mine, too,” I answered.

When we read to children, we all get to walk around in someone else’s shoes for a while. Sometimes, that is called perspective taking. It improves our social cognition, the ability to understand what others are thinking and feeling.

And social and emotional maturity is important for learning and for school success.

“The processes by which we regulate our emotions begin to develop when we are children. As we become adults, the framework put in place when we are younger becomes increasingly vital for successful learning to occur,” writes Joshua R. Eyler in “How Humans Learn: The Science and Stories Behind Effective College Teaching.”

Cognition and emotion work together. When we are unable to regulate our emotions, it disrupts our other brain activity, no matter how good the teaching is.

“Simply put: overwhelming emotions have a negative effect on learning,” Eyler writes.

Which brings us back to education and how we are all going to weather the coming weeks and months.

Relax. If all you can manage to do with your children while schools are closed is to read to them for half an hour a day, you will do more for them than either of you may realize.

Read what your family enjoys together. Start with five minutes, if that is all you can manage. Stop while you are still having fun. Go where your children’s curiosity takes you. Come back to it every day. I promise, we are all learning.

What happens when you read to children?

What happens when you read to children?

It hardly seems possible that something so low-tech, so enjoyable, could actually boost children’s grades, test scores and lifetime achievement. But it does. When you simply enjoy books with the children in your life, a lot of things happen:

1. Children learn new words and ideas.
Without even realizing it, children of any age absorb great new words and more understanding of the world around them. Then, when they read on their own, whether for school or for fun, children recognize words they encounter, and the text has meaning. That’s why it is important to start reading to children from birth.

TIP: Prolong conversations with children, even small ones. Engage them in describing what they see or what they have done in a day. Books are great for this.

LINK: Make yours a read aloud home — 10 things parents should know.

2. Children increase their own reading comprehension.
Reading is more than sounding out words and pronouncing them quickly, like items on a shopping list. The words in each sentence relate to all the others to produce meaning and sensation. Some children – even those who can look at tough new words and pronounce them correctly – do not readily draw meaning from the text. You see this when children know all the words in a story, and they’re paying attention, but they don’t get the joke, or they don’t sense when the end of a story is near. Children who regularly listen to stories they enjoy tend to develop good reading comprehension.

TIP: Pause to discuss when your child wants to talk about the action in a story. Encourage children to predict what will happen next, but don’t quiz. This reading time is just for fun.

LINK: More about reading comprehension from Reading Rockets.

3. You share your passion with children.
We talk about reading stories, and that often means fiction – novels, chapter books, many picture books. But any kind of reading that you can enjoy with a child will work. If you love basketball or history or travel, non-fiction (true) books may be your best friend. Magazine or newspasper articles and biographies that you enjoyed are all good choices to share. Read what interests you and the child. Children’s author Jon Scieszka (rhymes with fresca) has observed that boys in particular respond to funny books, disgusting imagery and stories about real people.

TIP: If you have trouble getting a child interested in books, go to the library and ask for books about anything that interests you both — bugs, Star Wars, horses, basketball, Egyptian mummies. Browsing the pictures and reading what interests you counts.

LINK: Jon Scieszka’s Guys Read website is full of recommendations for all ages.

4. Children become readers themselves.
Parents find that if they make time for just 20 minutes of read aloud most days of the week, children grow to like it so much they ask for more. Then they ask to read the book on their own, or they want to look for other books. Children who read for fun do better in school and have higher test scores than children who do not read for pleasure. They also write better, have better vocabularies, know grammar, spell better, read faster, know more about literature, know more about science and social studies, have more cultural literacy, have more practical knowledge, get better grades in writing classes and have less anxiety about writing. Students who read regularly also do better on the Test of English as a Foreign Language.

TIP: Make a regular trip to your public library to check out and return books. Whether once a week or once a month, the habit will pay off.

LINKS: The National Assessment for Educational Progress (this one is from 2011) surveyed students and found higher test scores were associated with children who reported reading for pleasure more frequently.

“The Power of Reading” by Stephen D. Krashen documents other benefits of reading aloud with children.

5. You share your values with children.
While sharing stories, even funny or silly stories, sometimes children raise questions. These questions can lead to discussions of right and wrong, sportsmanship, courtesy, friendship, discrimination or other weighty subjects. Children – even older children – naturally look to parents and then to other adults around them for their opinions and judgment. It may not be obvious in the moment, but reading aloud regularly creates opportunities for parents to stay informed and be influential in a child’s life.

6. You nurture children’s health and well-being into adulthood.
Children who read for fun generally read better on their own and do better in school and on tests than children who do not read for pleasure. Children who thrive in school tend to go further, not only to finish high school, but to college or other post-secondary education and beyond. More education is associated with better employment opportunities and higher earnings throughout life. People of higher income tend to enjoy healthier lives. People who read well are better able to look after their health needs.

7. You give yourself a welcome interlude in the day.
Reading has been shown to cause relaxation and may help you fall asleep. Older people who continue to read show less memory loss and suffer fewer effects of dementia. When adults make time to read to children for the children’s benefit, adults often discover that they themselves feel richer and stimulated by the experience, and they miss it when their reading time is interrupted.