Reading: Support from Home

Q: How can I support my child to become a more effective reader? 

 In short, there are three key things:

1) Students need to read often and widely, so they need access to lots of different books.

2) Students need to choose what they read most of the time.

3) Parents and teachers need to demonstrate that they read, too, and to have a positive attitude about it, instead of just assigning reading to students as a “must-do” for children.

See below for more detailed, research-based information about these ideas.

Three Ways Graphic Novels Benefit Readers, from Scholastic

Many parents have concerns about graphic novels as not being “real” books. However, some graphic novels have outstanding plots, characters, writing, and yes, illustrations. More powerfully, many are highly appealing to readers. Graphic novels are not just comic books with spines – they offer contrasts between what characters say and what they do or feel, opportunities for making inferences and predictions, and a chance to analyze how the images support a story’s themes.

https://www.scholastic.com/parents/books-and-reading/raise-a-reader-blog/3-reasons-graphic-novels-can-be-great-young-readers.html

         Penny Kittle’s Collection of Reading Research

If you are curious about specific research regarding the importance of student choice, access to books, and emphasis on reading practice involving lots of reading and discussing texts, this list of pdf files is a good start. Have a look at Six Literacy Experiences Children Should Have Every Day (Allington and Gabriel, 2012), Why Can’t I Skip My 20 Minutes of Reading Tonight? (Nagy and Herman, 1987), and Scholastic’s Kids and Family Reading Report (2017), which includes a number of graphs with survey responses related to reading habits.

https://pennykittle.net/index.php?page=penny-reading

         Donalyn Miller’s blog post “Readers, in Spite of School”

Donalyn Miller, author of The Book Whisperer and Reading in the Wild, writes about the disconnect that can exist between avid readers and school reading requirements.

https://nerdybookclub.wordpress.com/2019/10/06/readers-in-spite-of-school-by-donalyn-miller/