The Benefits of Reading Aloud with Children
For years, reading aloud with children has been known to be the single greatest predictor of school success for children. In The Power and Promise of Read-alouds and Independent Reading, (2018) published by the International Literacy Association, the authors discuss teacher-led read-aloud experiences and state: “There is a direct causal relationship between reading to children at a young age and their future schooling outcomes. Effective read-alouds increase children’s vocabulary, listening comprehension, story schema, background knowledge, word recognition skills, and cognitive development. In addition to these important academic benefits, read-alouds promote a love of literature, foster social interactions, and ignite a passion for lifelong reading habits. Reading aloud to children is so important that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that parents read aloud to their infants from birth”(ILA 2). Yet, despite the facts, reading aloud with, and to children has fallen by the wayside and is in a marked decline as a family practice. The authors state, “the National Endowment for the Arts warns that literacy – as a leisure activity – will virtually disappear in a half a century” (ILA 2).
The Unintended Effects of New Technologies
New technologies have offered entertaining alternative options that not only attract attention and may be influencing brain growth and development, but have the potential for influencing childrens’ social and emotional skill development as well. The convenience of handing a child an ebook read-aloud, a video game, or even an educational application on a phone or tablet allows parents to continue with their priorities while letting the device meet their child’s needs, or distract them from those needs. Using this trade-off only occasionally makes little difference for a child and may be a blessing for a busy parent, however substituting devices and distractions for parental interaction and involvement on a regular basis has quite a cost attached for both the parent and the child.
When Family Read-aloud Time is Lost…
…gone are the shared enjoyments of experiencing the story together, the attention given to the child’s comprehension of, and reaction to the story; the insight and meaning-making cues a parent gives while reading a story to their child, and the physical closeness of sharing the book between them.
If new words are encountered in the read-aloud played by the device, the child can skim past them easily, whereas their parent may have known the child would be unfamiliar with the word and given an explanation. Gone too, are the moments of putting oneself in a child’s shoes and seeing the world again from a child’s point of view, which certainly aids family interaction and relationship-building.
In addition, all the shared discussion of the reasoning within the story, outcomes, judgments about characters and their actions, expansion of understanding of family value systems, modeling of social and emotional cueing behaviors, and parental demonstrations of appropriate responses to emotional experiences are given up in lieu of the ease of providing entertainment and/or distraction via electronic devices.
Where is the influence coming from that is helping our children form their understanding of desirable interpersonal behavior and personal ethics? Do we want to have the ethics and behaviors found in gaming worlds and automated storytimes become the primary contributing factors in our childrens’ development?
Technological learning devices and games can help with skill development, enhance the development of perceptual abilities, and provide entertainment just like automated story experiences, applications, and even some television shows. But none of them are adequate substitutes for parental involvement, expressions of interest and caring, communication and clarification of family values, uninterrupted attention, vocabulary and reading interest development, and the shared experience of a story. Make it a family practice to practice being a family; reading aloud together can be an important piece of that practice!
– International Literacy Association. (2018). The power and promise of read-alouds and independent reading. [Literacy leadership brief]. Newark, DE. ILA/ Molly Ness.
– National Endowment for the Arts. (2004). Reading at risk: A survey of literary reading in America. Washington, DC: NEA/Tom Bradshaw.
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