In my house, bedtime story time means squishing into my daughter鈥檚 bed and reading aloud until one of us (usually me) passes out. It鈥檚 lovely literacy-enriched cuddle time. But no one ever taught me how to do it the right way.
That鈥檚 because until recently there鈥檚 been very little evidence that there is a right way to read bedtime stories. Before,聽the experts mostly implored parents: READ TO YOUR CHILD. Just spend 20 minutes. That鈥檚 all!
Check out Language development in children: A complete parent鈥檚 guide to learn all about how you can support your child鈥檚 language development from birth through high school.
Johnny can’t read and neither can his classmates
Many聽parents dutifully follow these vague directions — maybe not as much as they are supposed to — but research suggests that parents do read aloud regularly to their young children. And many kids learn to read聽despite聽this less-than-scientific approach. But a huge number don鈥檛. According to a , only 32 percent聽of fourth graders are proficient in reading.聽That鈥檚 a devastating statistic if there ever was one.
Secret to teaching reading revealed!
There’s a laundry list of social ills contributing to why American children struggle to learn even basic skills — especially given the disproven method used across the country for years despite what the science of learning to read tells us — and it’s hard to think ivory tower educational research can be their savior. 聽Still, I was excited to hear about new findings from a 聽that uncovered a simple tip to help turn on kid鈥檚 reading brains.
Pointing out the obvious while reading bedtime stories
The research,聽,聽found that using 鈥減rint references鈥� (i.e. physically pointing out obvious things like 鈥淪ee how the beginning of dog starts with the d sound?鈥� and 鈥淟ook how I鈥檓 reading from left to right.鈥�) during reading time makes a huge difference in how well kids learn to聽read. Studies聽by the same researchers have shown that untrained teachers reference print聽in this way聽about 8.5 times a reading session compared to trained teachers who do it about 36 times.聽We parents only do it about once. (Until now, of course.)
The study divided 300 academically at-risk preschoolers into three kinds of classrooms聽for a 30-week reading program.聽In one group, teachers trained to use print references read aloud four times a week. In the second group, similarly trained teachers read aloud only two times a week, and in聽the聽control group, teachers read to their classes as they normally did four times a week.
This reading tip improves reading comprehension, too?!
After one and two years,聽the children who had been taught by teachers who read four times a week with print references were not only better at word reading and spelling, but here鈥檚 the weird thing:聽they had better reading comprehension,聽too! (Even the researchers seemed confounded by this.) Even the children who only got two days a week of print-referenced reading had slightly better skills than the children in the control group.
This study seems so strange — could such a little shift change children’s聽reading horizons so easily? It reminds me how reading must start out as a completely baffling enterprise, a kind of magic haze that kids can spend years wandering in before they find a path. With those 100 billion neurons making connections at the speed of light, scaling a vast mountain of meaning and facts and skills, their brains need a foothold, and the more footholds you give them, the more progress they can make, letter by letter, word by word.
