Reading Aloud to Children

    Reading, reading education, and reading aloud to children is something that is very close to my heart, because of my reading disability and my own difficulties learning to read in my life. Literacy is a child’s gateway to life. The ability to read opens up more jobs and makes it possible to graduate from high school and continue on for further education. Reading empowers kids.

    Children need to be read to starting at a young age. Early exposure to reading allows children to make connections with words and letters before they even start school.

    Reading aloud to children needs to continue far past elementary school. Unfortunately, reading aloud to children is not common in middle and high school. The focus on reading by this point is having the children read aloud or to have the children read silently to themselves.

    Reading aloud to students gets children interested in reading and can improve their self esteem. It can also be used as a way to teach reading comprehension. Children who struggle with basic reading skills will most likely struggle comprehending the passage, since so much energy is put into just figuring out the words in the passage (of course there are exceptions to this). When a student hears something read to them, he or she can focus on the story being read. The student can focus on picking up the details, the characters, and the main idea.

    The link below is a campaign on reading aloud to students from birth to high school for 20 minutes a day. Though this article talks a lot about reading to children in lower socioeconomic levels, reading aloud to students is important for all students.  Launch a National "Read To Kids" Campaign

    I have posted a survey question that will be up for the next five days, so don't forget to answer the survey. I'll be talking more about reading, reading disabilities, and my book in future posts. I haven't had a lot of time the past few weeks to work on writing my book, but I have scheduled time this weekend for writing and also next week during spring break. Stay tuned for more updates.