In honor of Ted "Dr.Seuss" Geisel's 105th birthday, the NEA teacher's union sponsored a nationwide event today called Read Across America. If you did not participate, you missed a tremendous opportunity to give back to your community, support a terrific union and have a lot of fun. Now, I know the school day is pretty much over now but don't let that stop you. Many districts are making it a week-long event and nothing is stopping you from volunteering with kids on a regular old school day
After dropping off my four-year-old boy, himself a huge fan of the Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham, at day care, I headed over to a school in one of Phoenix's poorest districts. After signing in at the office, I was escorted to a class of second and third graders. I was told by my host that the school was built in 1964, and was originally K-8 but now is K-6 but educates about 60% more kids than when it opened. It's been awhile since I was in a school but I was shocked that the classroom I had been assigned to held almost fifty kids.
The teacher, a man in his fifties who had been teaching at the school for nearly thirty years (and whom I had been warned was "eccentric") introduced me and led a discussion about the importance of reading. In his classroom, kids are asked to look up any words they don't know, use it in a sentence and draw a picture representing the word, which I thought was pretty cool.
I chose one of Dr. Seuss's lesser known books to read - McGelligot's Pool - because it was one of the first books I remember from my childhood and I thought it would be nice to introduce them to something they probably hadn't read before. I found myself walking up and down the rows as I read, as that was the only way I could think of to try to engage eight rows of six kids and make sure all of them could see the pictures. I have never spoken in front of such a rapt audience before. I received a nice round of applause when I was through and had them take one for themselves for being such a great audience.
All in all, a very rewarding experience.
Twenty-six percent of children who were read to three or four times in the last week by a family member recognized all letters of the alphabet. This is compared to 14 percent of children who were read to less frequently.
The NCES1 also reported that children who were read to frequently are also more likely to:
count to 20, or higher than those who were not (60% vs. 44%)
write their own names (54% vs. 40%)
read or pretend to read (77% vs. 57%)
According to NCES2, only 53 percent of children ages three to five were read to daily by a family member (1999). Children in families with incomes below the poverty line are less likely to be read to aloud everyday than are children in families with incomes at or above poverty.
The more types of reading materials there are in the home, the higher students are in reading proficiency, according to the Educational Testing Service.3
The Educational Testing Services reported that students who do more reading at home are better readers and have higher math scores; however, students read less for fun as they get older.3
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