How Not to Lose Ground in Literacy Growth
By Mark W.F. Condon, Unite for Literacy vice president
Literacy development can be interrupted for a range of reasons. Recently, the most dramatic instances of learning loss have sprung from the impact of the COVID pandemic. The COVID lockdown has been blamed for huge portions of school populations that, because of time away from school experience, have fallen behind in their learning. Summertime also gets blamed for learning loss. It’s when many children experience what’s called “Summer Slide.” However, there is an abundance of evidence to suggest that literacy growth does not halt for children who take a break from formal schooling if they enjoy daily, relaxed reading of self-selected books.
In fact, children who read over the summer continue to improve their reading test scores without having had a single lesson during their time off. The lesson here is that, like so many other capabilities—in sports, musical instrument playing, and artwork—children get better at what they spend time doing.
Now, there is no readily available evidence of which we are aware that the same kind of growth occurs during the school year by children who have been sick or hospitalized for long periods of time. However, simple logic suggests that those isolated children who still read each day, or are read to, during such absences may also continue to grow in literacy despite their afflictions.