At the Innovation in Education 2018 fair, I made a short presentation on the benefits of reading to children. Noticing that the participants in the audience where taking notes, I told then that they don’t need to copy everything, that I would publish at least the most important bits for their benefit. My presentation was one of three different presentation on literacy.
And, here they are.
I shared how I read to my little nephew and how I even volunteered to read aloud to his class, and did, once.
List of Sources:
- This American Life (podcast). Going Big.
- TedTalk. Lessons from the longest study on human development.
- TedTalk. Why we should be reading aloud to children.
- The Big Think. Yale study: people who read live longer than those who don’t.
- CBC. Illustrated story books are better for kids’ brains than video or text, study finds.
There you go!
Incidentally, if you are interested in what the participants thought of the workshop as a whole, click here.
References
(Added after the publication of the blog post.)
CBC (Sept. 12, 2018). ‘Nothing short of remarkable’: Study finds parents’ chats with their toddlers pay off 10 years later. “A study published this week in Pediatrics found that toddlers with parents who spend lots of time listening and chatting with them are more likely to have better language skills and higher IQs a decade later than youngsters left hanging in silence.” [Added on Sept. 16, 2018.]
UNL. Reach Out and Read. About the nationwide program in the US, through hospitals, which encourages mothers, especially from low socio-economic backgrounds, to read to their children. Click here to go to Reach Out and Read’s home page. [Added on Sept. 16, 2018.]
The Guardian (Oct. 12, 2018). Novel news: world’s biggest bookworms revealed in study. “Researchers reveal having more books at home when growing up, even if you don’t necessarily read more, improves educational outcomes[.]” “The study, published in the journal Social Science Research, found the number of household books at age 16 had a direct positive relationship with literacy, numeracy and IT skill in later years – independent of how much tertiary study a person did, or how often they read as an adult.”[…]”They found the positive impact was greatest for those with higher levels of disadvantage, meaning lower income families could narrow the education gap by exposing their children to more books in the house.” [Emphasis mine.] [Added Oct. 12, 2018.]
The Guardian (Sept. 16, 2013). Reading for fun improves children’s brains, study confirms. “A study of 17,000 people from birth indicates that reading for pleasure improves not just literacy, but maths ability too. And we will soon know whether the effects continue into adult life[.]” [Added on Oct. 12, 2018.]
The Guardian (May 29, 2016). Boys who live with books ‘earn more as adults’. “Italian economists find access to books can materially affect earnings compared with those who grew up with few or none[.]” [Added on Oct. 12, 2018.]
news.osu.edu (April 2019). A “million word gap” for children who aren’t read to at home. That’s how many fewer words some may hear by kindergarten. [Added Feb. 26, 2020.]
