The Science Behind Making a Good Reader
You’re a parent living through this Covid nightmare with your kids. Your childcare or school options are either unavailable or inconsistent. You don’t have the energy to do too much, but you know how important reading is and you want to make sure that what you’re doing will help your child get ready to read, or get better at reading.
Up until now, you’ve been told to read to your children every day and you do your best to make that happen. But now, you really need to know if what you're doing is the right way to spend your time, and your child’s.
The best thing for you to do is start with a better understanding of what it really takes to become a strong reader and student. So here are 5 highlights from the research on reading development, unpacked, to help you use your energy to propel your child forward:
1. There are three buckets of skills children need to read well, and they are all crucial.
Bucket #1. Letters & Sounds skills -- namely, a child needs to know the 26 letters and ~44 sounds that those letters or letter combinations make. This includes hearing the difference between the sounds in MAP and MAT, for example, and being able to rhyme. Children need to be automatic with these skills so they can quickly read words. Children just beginning to read will slowly decode words by sounding them out or use pictures as clues, but these techniques are not sustainable. That’s because they need to be able to understand what they are reading... and when children have to work too hard at figuring out how to read each word, there’s no cognitive space left to understand the text. Make sense?
Some think that reading individual words is all children need, but in fact, while this first bucket of skills is essential, it’s not enough.
Bucket #2: Vocabulary & Knowledge skills --children need to know about a lot of different subjects, and to have lots of opportunities to hear the language and ideas found in books. Remember, right now you may be trying to prepare your children to read The Cat in the Hat, but eventually they will be reading high school history books, and Ethan Frome or To Kill a Mockingbird. This skill bucket is really important because if they aren’t read to a lot when they are younger (and still read to when they are just reading easy books on their own), they won’t have a lot of background information and comfort with the language of print (which is different from how we speak). These skills are critical to reading and succeeding in school, long term.
Bucket #3: Awareness & Regulation skills -- children need to be aware of other people so they can understand the perspectives of others, including characters in books and historical figures. So, for example, while it may not seem important to reading skill growth when you remind your children to thank people who hold the door for them, or when you help them see why it’s important to share with their younger brothers and sisters, you are actually teaching empathy and perspective taking, which is necessary for life -- and for reading success.
This bucket of skill also focuses on regulation. Children need to be able to control their minds and bodies well enough to take advantage of all the learning opportunities around them, and learn about lots of things. So, for example, if they can’t focus, they won’t be able to listen to the teacher give directions or the aquarium guide talk about the penguin exhibit. If you help them work on understanding and regulating their emotions, this will help prevent them from lashing out at the person bothering them and meanwhile missing what’s being taught in class.
2. Older children who struggle to read mostly struggle with bucket #2 because they can’t fully understand the language in books -- the meanings of the words and the way the sentences are written. That’s because books get more complex as the years go on, and the language in them is different from the speech we use in everyday life. Plus, the more sophisticated words often describe topics that are completely unfamiliar to struggling students. If your child can enter middle or high-school books with strong vocabulary and some background information about lots of subjects, the upper level books will be easier. (Of course bucket #1, being automatic at reading words, is a problem for some older students, but more struggle with understanding because of low language and not enough knowledge about the world.)
3. Most of the reading-related skills build up over time, especially buckets #2 & #3 above. They have to accumulate from children’s earliest years, through back-and-forth conversations and interactions with the people in their lives. Because these skills have to accumulate, it’s important to start early and keep at it. But it shouldn’t feel like “work.” In fact, this “skill building” can and should be the most pleasant part of everyone’s days, and it should focus on TALK.
4. Children need a systematic phonics program at school in the early years (kindergarten through grades 1 or 2). Phonics should be one regular part (~20 mins a day, for most children) of a larger reading program in your child’s school, so look into whether your school has a phonics program. Such a program will address bucket #1, but informal play with letters and sounds at home will make this bucket of skills easier to grasp when the school programming begins. Phonics shouldn’t be all a child learns, but those skills need practice for a short period of time every day, and more for children who have trouble with them.
5. Reading issues run in families. If you or your spouse struggled to read, be aware that your child might, too. If you are alert to it, you can address any problems early, when intervention works best. Remember, a reading problem is just an instructional issue that can be fixed, not a character flaw :)
In the end, you only have so much time to spend with your children every day, and there are lots of opportunities to build the skills that have to accumulate. Think about that time as a precious resource, and you’ll realize that reading and talking together builds a lot of the skills a child needs to be successful. In fact, meaningful back-and-forth conversations are literally brain changing for kids. So it doesn’t make sense to spend all your time working on flashcards so they can read that C-A-T spells CAT. Those other buckets of skills need filling, and they require a drip, drip, drip of easy conversation to challenge children in skill-building ways, throughout every day.
Joan Kelley, Ed.M
Founder & CEO of Abound Parenting