A love of reading starts at home and is fostered through encouragement and reading alongside your child. We know that children can only become better readers by reading, and that there are so many more benefits of being a lifelong reader beyond test scores, like becoming a more empathetic and compassionate human being.

In “one of the most extensive studies of independent reading yet conducted,” Anderson, Wilson, and Fielding (1988) traced reading growth to independent reading and reading volume. They found that the amount of time students spent in independent reading outside of school was the best predictor of reading achievement.

When we add just 10 more minutes a day to our reading, exposure to language and words increases dramatically, as well as a student's percentile ranking on standardized testing. This information is from Kylene Beers and Robert Probst in their research presented in Disrupting Thinking, published in 2017.