Dr. Sharp has been a key member of the team since we started our passionate journey back at Microsoft to rethink reading practice. Besides being a wonderful human being, she has a very deep knowledge and background on young children’s reading. Dr. Sharp is also an excellent author. We have learned so much from her that we wanted to share her thoughts with you. Dr. Sharp’s website is http://www.dianasharp.com.
Dear Dr. Sharp:
It makes sense that helping kids to love reading should be a priority in every child’s home. But what research supports it?
Great question. Doing research in this area isn’t quite as straightforward as, say, research on a new drug. You can’t take a group of kids, randomly assign half of them to swallow “reading love,” and then give the other kids a sugar pill and see what happens. Fortunately education researchers can be quite devious – I mean, clever – and I’m convinced the case has been made. Here are my top-ten favorite numbers from research, what they can tell us about kids and reading, and why everyone involved with ItzaBitza is so passionate about finding new ways to foster reading love.
#1
You can’t talk about the effects of reading without talking about vocabulary. And research shows that vocabulary is hands-down the most consistent #1 predictor of academic achievement.
50%
There are 50 percent more rare words in children’s books than in adult prime-time TV – or in the conversation of college graduates. Kids who spend more time with books spend more time with more words.
1,000 vs. 24 hours
Children in highly literate homes can hear well over 1,000 hours of read-aloud books in their first six years. Children from homes with infrequent storybook reading can come to first grade hearing less than 24 hours of reading at home in their first six years. When you think about what that means for vocabulary learning in particular and cognitive development in general, it’s plain scary. I loved hearing about a new effort in Toledo, Ohio, to assign individual volunteer readers to children living in low-literacy households.
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090615/NEWS16/906150323/0/NEWS08
If you live there, please sign up!
45 million versus 13 million
By the age of four, an average child in a professional family has heard 45 million words, and an average child in a welfare family has heard 13 million. That’s a difference of hearing 32 million words. The best – and maybe only – way to make up for that difference in experience with words is through becoming a voracious reader.
577
This is the number of Maryland fourth graders who were part of a study that looked at test scores on the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress). Researchers found that low-privileged kids – those with low family incomes and low mother-education levels – who read a lot outscored significantly high-privileged kids who didn’t read a lot. This is great news! Those huge early differences in experiences with words can be overcome if kids love reading enough to read, read, read.
0
This is the number of other studies I’ve seen where researchers have discovered anything else that results in low-privileged kids outscoring high-privileged kids on national skills assessments. Zero. Zip. Nada. It may be out there, but I haven’t seen it. Reading is that powerful.
4
OK, this is a bit of a cheat, but “four” is the number of tests used in another one of my favorite studies. Fourth through sixth graders who read a lot significantly outscored non-avid readers (with the same decoding ability) on these four separate tests: word knowledge, verbal fluency, vocabulary, and general information. The two groups scored the same on tests of non-verbal intelligence, decoding, and spelling, which strongly suggests they had the same basic abilities to read – it was the amount of reading they did that mattered. As the researchers put it, “Reading makes you smarter.”
2 days vs. 1 year
By fifth grade, kids who read “a lot” in their own free time – that is, they’re in the 90th percentile in terms of how much they read – are reading as much in two days as other fifth grade kids read in an entire year. Which group of kids do you want yours to be in?
10 to 50 million
The range in the number of words read by middle school students each year is from 100,000 for an unmotivated reader to somewhere between 10 and 50 million for the kids who read the most. Need I repeat, vocabulary is the #1 predictor of student achievement.
4 – 6
A highly respected group of researchers recently came out with the recommendation that kindergarten children should read or have read to them at least four to six books a day. No wonder!
