Why Reading Aloud to Your Child Can Help Them Succeed

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Why Reading Aloud to Your Child Can Help Them Succeed

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By the time a child reaches the third grade, how well they read can have a tremendous impact on their future, including high school performance, college acceptance, and even overall career success. In this week's edition of Thrive, we discuss why reading aloud can improve your child's reading skills and increase their enjoyment of the written word.

According to a 2010 study from the Annie E. Casey Foundation titled, Early Warning! Why Reading by the Third Grade Matters, researchers found that children who do not read proficiently by the end of third grade are four times more likely to drop out of high school than children with adequate reading skills.

Low reading comprehension disproportionately affects children from low-income families - about 83 percent of these children cannot read at a fourth-grade level by the time they get there. However, children from middle and upper-income families are also affected; approximately 45 percent of these children cannot read at a fourth-grade level when they arrive to their fourth-grade classroom.

Since the study was first published, not much has changed in the following years. According to Reading is Fundamental, a nonprofit organization that promotes literacy, 65 percent of all fourth graders nationwide still read below their grade level.

The 'Transformative Power' of Reading Aloud

Rebecca Willingham, a longtime educator and author of The Artful Read-Aloud: 10 Principles to Inspire, Engage, and Transform Learning, says reading aloud helps children understand reading on a deeper level, which carries over when they read to themselves.

"Even when kids are reading on their own, reading aloud can have a tremendous impact on their independent reading lives," Willingham said in a TED Talk. "Because when kids go back to their own books, they know that words should come alive in their brains as they read. They know that real readers pause to wonder, think, and ask questions. They know that real readers let the stories affect them, maybe even change them."

Willingham added that the experience of hearing a parent or teacher read aloud to them can deepen their understanding of story.

"Reading aloud gives kids a special kind of access to the transformative power of story and an experience of what reading is all about," she said.

At home, parents reading to their child is also a great opportunity to spend quality time together and share a communal experience - no matter the child's age.

"Reading aloud gives us a chance to look up from our screens, phones, computers, to connect with each other through the simple act of reading and talking together," Willingham said. "Even when they can't sit on our laps anymore and especially when they'd rather be on their phones. Even when they're not 3 or 4 but 8, 10, 12, a teenager and they might not be so inclined to share much with us anymore. Having a book to lean on can help us get inside them."

Willingham is not alone in this assessment. The American Academy of Pediatrics also recommends that parents read aloud to their children to help build more nurturing parent-child relationships, which helps build enhance their cognitive, language and social-emotional development.

Four Tips for Reading Aloud

We compiled a list of tips on how to make the most of your reading aloud time, along with links to where you can find more.

  1. Aim for a minimum of 30 minutes per day. Time can be scarce but reading to your child for 30 minutes per day can have tremendous benefits for when they get older. According to Michigan State University: "If you read to your child for 30 minutes a day, every day from birth they will go to kindergarten with over 900 hours of literacy experiences! But if you reduce that to 30 minutes a week, they only have 130 hours of reading time before they start school."

  2. Get your child involved in the story. Smart Reading says that when parents ask children questions about the story or describing the pictures they see, children are more involved in the reading process and benefit from the more active experience.

  3. Mix a book with a movie. With so many children's movies based on books, you won't have a problem finding a combination. Scholastic recommends that parents read the book with their child first and then watch the movie to discuss the differences. This makes it easy to talk about and gives children an opportunity to exercise their critical thinking skills.

  4. If your child loves the story, don't be afraid of repetition. Some parents worry that reading the same book over and over again is not beneficial to their child's development. However, repetition helps children follow the story, learn the narrative, and reinforce knowledge of new words. And this will help them become better readers.