What Counts in Early Reading
By Mark W.F. Condon, Unite for Literacy vice president
You may have heard the assertion, “What gets measured gets done.” Thankfully, there are measurable steps that families, preschool educators, and childcare professionals can take to help ensure children’s early reading success prior to Kindergarten. And the trek must begin long before the first day of Kindergarten. It must begin at birth.
Two organizations—Read 15 Minutes A Day or Read 1,000 Books—offer guidelines about how to read to newborns and support children’s all-important language and literacy development using the richness of lovable books.
While sharing 1,000 books before Kindergarten may sound like a lot, reading aloud 15 minutes every day sounds manageable. Either way you frame it, daily shared reading time pays off. Depending upon a child’s birthday, families have about five full years to read enough with their little ones to set them on a path to reading success in Kindergarten and beyond.
When kids are tiny, so are their books, which makes it easy for loving caregivers to read many books a day with them. Even when kids are closing in on day one of Kindergarten, enjoying two or three books each day and before bed is not out of the question, and reaching 1,000 books in about five years becomes a cinch.
The 1,000 books and the 15 minutes a day goal seekers simply come at the same target from different directions. They are both merely asking parents to joyfully read and chat about books every day.
These suggested targets help families ensure that kids acquire rich language and book knowledge (e.g., how to hold a book, turn pages, read left-to-right and top-to-bottom, understand how written and spoken words work together to make books personally meaningful), priming them for the delights of learning text-reading in school.
The two organizations mentioned in this article offer clear and simple messages, yet many parents don’t receive the messages and/or they and their children live in a Book Desert. Both can have damaging effects and render children entering Kindergarten deficient to progress through school as enthusiastic and comfortable book consumers, the single most important goal of school.
Bottom line: “What counts as reading” is sharing books with kids, enjoyably talking with them about what you read together, and encouraging them in selecting and reading their own book choices.