Tag Archives: literacy crisis

Studies on “Reading Aloud to Children, Social Inequalities, and Vocabulary Development”

The Evidence is Mounting…

Recent studies on the effects of speaking and reading to children in the preschool years confirm an important truth about where future literacy success begins.

A highly significant take-away is that poverty, lack of parental education, and even under-resourced schools, while they may be correlated statistically, are not necessarily the cause of poor literacy outcomes nor are they necessarily determinative.

This is very good news.

The more we learn about brain development in the first five years, the more obvious it is that those who care about children and literacy must focus our efforts on this period of life.

Last spring I titled my talk at the World Literacy Summit in Oxford “How the First Five Years Frame Future Literacy.”

Two studies published recently corroborated this claim.

Having spent decades teaching, I had reached this conclusion long ago. Most teachers understand that a child’s exposure to language and books before they ever set foot in kindergarten makes all the difference when they are eventually taught to read.

But research and studies are important too and difficult to ignore. So here they are.

How Do Infants and Toddlers Learn Language?

One study reported in Neuroscience News sampled over 1000 infants and toddlers from 12 countries speaking 43 languages to understand how language is learned.

They discovered that the amount of speech children hear is the “primary driver of language development.”

Not socioeconomics, or gender, or multilingualism.

In a nutshell, children who hear more speech, understand and produce more speech.

The take-away for parents? Talk to your babies.

Who Benefits from Information About Shared Reading and Access to Books?

Another study came from the IZA Institute of Labor Economics. Based in Bonn, Germany, IZA’s research mission is to “focus on understanding economic inequality, particularly the central role of labor markets and the psychological underpinnings of human behavior.”

We know that literacy outcomes have everything to do with a future skilled and employable labor force. This study aimed to discover how we can foster that.

The research team wanted to understand the impact of setting up a ‘randomized controlled trial’ of a shared book reading intervention targeting 4 year old children in socially mixed neighborhoods in Paris.

We selected a large, random sample of families and provided parents with free books, information on the benefits of SBR (shared book reading) and tips for effective reading practices.

The vocabulary of children in both treated and control groups were assessed both before and after the intervention.

Here is what they discovered:

Children from all families in the intervention group greatly increased their shared book reading frequency and improved their vocabulary.

The ‘low-educated and immigrant’ families improved their vocabulary as much as those from ‘high-educated, native families’.

Also significantly, continuous positive vocabulary growth occurred in disadvantaged families, despite the fact that these children often attended poorly resourced schools.

What Do These Studies Reveal About Where Literacy Begins?

Speaking and reading to young children before they begin school—regardless of their socioeconomic status, immigrant status, gender, level of parental education, or multilingualism—results in language and vocabulary development.

Since a child’s vocabulary is the number one predictor of school success, this is critically important to understand.

What these studies show is that if we want to have a real and lasting impact on literacy outcomes, we need to focus our attention and resources on parents and caregivers of children from infancy through the preschool years.

This is what will set all children up for success.

Reading Comprehension: When Kids Struggle

The Missing Tools That Make Reading Comprehension So Hard to Teach Directly

Why is reading comprehension so difficult to teach?

Because it’s predicated on three tools that are effortlessly gained when a child is read to, yet harder to achieve when they have to be consciously taught.

~A large and rich vocabulary

~A well-developed attention span

~Access to a wider world (what teachers call background of experience)

These tools are prerequisites for understanding what is read.

When a child arrives at school without them, learning to read and understanding what they read can be a Herculean challenge.

Teachers know this. And they work hard to build them.

But the sad reality is that 75% of children who begin school without these tools will never catch up.

A child can be spared this struggle so easily.

Just one picture book a day results in…

~Exposure to over a million words by kindergarten.

~A well-developed attention span.

~Background knowledge that helps them understand what they read.

Then reading comprehension follows. Easily.

For a quick audio review of The Invisible Toolbox by the youth services librarian of the Westmont Public Library, find it here.

“The Invisible Toolbox” is Off to Oxford

World Literacy Summit, 2023

This spring I’ll be crossing the pond to be one of the presenters at The World Literacy Summit 2023. People from 85 countries who care about improving literacy around the world will gather in Oxford to share experiences and ideas.

If you can’t get to England, but are interested in attending, there’s good news. There’s also a virtual option for registration. You can check out all the details here.

In the meantime, if you’re curious about my talk, have a look at the overview that I submitted to the selection committee below:

“The Invisible Toolbox: How the First Five Years Frames Future Literacy”

“Neuroscience confirms that children who have been read to regularly from birth arrive at school on day one with “invisible toolboxes” full of all the pre-literacy tools that they need in order to be successful in school and beyond.  

While it’s generally understood that reading aloud to a child is a good idea, many new and expectant parents don’t fully understand why doing so in the early years is critical for a child’s academic and social-emotional development. 

What are these tools? Why do they make such a difference? How can we educate parents, in this age of distraction, to understand that reading aloud to their child is one of the greatest gifts they can give and support them in doing so? 

We will explore these questions through the lens of the research of Dr. John Hutton (Pediatrician and Director of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Reading and Literacy Discovery Center), the data of various literacy and government organizations, and my own experience as a teacher of reading and writing for decades in the elementary school classroom. 

We’ll also discuss organizations in the U.S. and beyond that are reaching into communities with limited access to books that may also have language and cultural obstacles that prevent them from filling their children’s “invisible toolboxes.” 

As I’ve begun piloting my own program to gift The Invisible Toolbox and related resources, I’ve been heartened and amazed to see what tremendous work is going on in the nonprofit sector. But there is still much to do. 

Reaching people in the earliest stages of their parenting and helping them develop their own tools so that they can pass them along is one of the greatest gifts that those of us who care deeply about literacy and children can give.”

See you in Oxford!

Thanks, Read Aloud Nebraska!

A widespread internet outage last Friday at Read Aloud Nebraska‘s annual conference threatened to derail my virtual keynote presentation. Yikes! This is the type of unforeseen event that every conference planner and speaker dreads. But Megan, the expert IT specialist on site, cooly and calmly found a work-around. She used her iPhone as a mobile hotspot to share my talk and enable me to call in for a discussion with our in-person audience. Great save, Megan!

I love sharing about The Invisible Toolbox and why reading to our children is one of the greatest gifts a parent can give. Here’s an excerpt that explains how the building of every child’s invisible toolbox begins with love and connection…

The Gift of Reading and Wellness

May was a busy blur of book talks and presentations. While they’re still happening virtually, life does seem to be opening up. Hopefully, soon more of these will happen in person!

One of my favorite audiences to speak to are the parents of young children. Earlier this month I had a great time visiting and sharing with my friend and former colleague Ji Wang’s Saturday morning PTA Wellness group at the elementary school where she is principal. The sign above hangs on the fence right next to their parent drop off/pick-up circle. How clever is that?

Here’s a quick excerpt from my presentation:

If you’re interested in setting up a presentation, book talk, or class for your school or parenting group, I’d love to hear from you! Soon-to-be and new parents, it’s never too early to learn about one of the greatest gifts you’ll ever give your child.

“It may be small, but it’s mighty…”

When I met my newborn book for the first time, it wasn’t love at first sight. I held the tiny tome* in my hand, eyeing it critically, wondering what people would think. Couldn’t she write a book with more pages? Would they think it lacked substance?

A smallish gift book was what I’d planned all along, a volume so not intimidating and so visually appealing that even the most reluctant parent reader would consider picking it up. But when my agent and I met with my editor and the company’s CEO last month via Zoom and learned that Mango had reversed their earlier decision and now planned to print The Invisible Toolbox in soft cover instead of hard, my heart dropped. I was not only disappointed; I was worried. Would a softcover gift book have the same appeal as hardcover?

Mango’s marketing department was concerned that titles comparable to mine were priced at a rate with which a hardcover book wouldn’t be able to compete. Like a wounded parent, I protested: But my book is unique! There isn’t anything out there quite like it. They weren’t moved. And so the decision was made. It was out of my hands.

“I wasn’t sure I could sell it. But then I couldn’t resist.”


When Federal Express left a carton of complimentary author copies on my doorstep this week, I called my agent. “It’s so little.”

She laughed. “Remember, I almost didn’t sign you because the book is so small. I wasn’t sure I could sell it. But then I couldn’t resist.” Julia believes in the message and understands what’s at stake. For her, it’s all about saving democracy. Maybe you’ve seen the meme: A child who reads will be an adult who thinks.

Thank you, Julia, for blowing away any lingering wisps of self-doubt. The Invisible Toolbox may be small. And it may even have a softcover. But its message is mighty.

* An oxymoron, I know, but I like the alliteration.

The Critical First Five Years

As much as we’d like to believe that children arrive at school on the first day of kindergarten with comparable reservoirs of potential, the sad reality is this simply isn’t true. From the very beginning of their school lives, the playing field is not even. Children arrive in wide-ranging states of readiness to learn, predetermined by their early language experiences.

Watch this powerful graphic illustration of the impact of the first five years on a child’s future learning trajectory from The Children’s Reading Foundation:

The fact is, children who have been read to regularly come equipped with the critical tools they need for the world of school. Children who lack this experience enter school already behind and, as the video reveals, they rarely catch up.

By reading to our children from birth on, we can build a foundation of literacy skills that will not only enable them to enter kindergarten on day one with joy and confidence, but carry them successfully far into the future.

“You Must Not Stop Reading Books. That’s All.”

 

 

 

 

A deeply informed, literate people may be the only thing that stands in the gap between our nation and its ideals and the rising tide of ignorance, tribalism, and barbarism that appears to prevail today. Make no mistake—history teaches that progress is reversible. It has happened before, and it can happen again. Pulitzer Prize-winning, Wall Street Journal columnist, author, and speechwriter Peggy Noonan recently delivered a commencement address to The Catholic University of America’s graduating class of 2017 that captures exactly what’s at stake for us as a civilization. No matter where you fall on the political spectrum nor what your religious faith is, the following is worth your time.  Her message is non-partisan and non-sectarian.

 

“Today is for celebration but starting tomorrow I humbly urge you to embark on a lifelong relationship with a faithful companion who will always help you and sometimes delight you — who will never desert you, who will make you smarter, and wiser, who will always be by your side and enlighten you all the days of your life. I am talking about: books.

You must not stop reading books.  That’s all.  If you seek a happy and interesting life, one of depth, meaning and accomplishment, you must read books.

Now, you have certainly read a few to get here today and some of you have read a great many.  But don’t stop, continue, even speed up.  And if you have not read all that many books it’s okay, you can start now, your brain is still young and fresh, it can still absorb and hold and even commit to memory big important things.

And now I share the thing I will not forget that I saw during the campaign of 2016.  I’d been seeing it for a while but last year it broke through to me in a new way.

I saw something, especially among the young men and women of politics and journalism — two professions from which excellent work is now more crucial to our country than ever.  These young reporters and candidates for office are college graduates, they’re in their 20s and 30s and early 40s, they’re bright and ambitious and work hard.  But it became clear in long conversation that they’ve received most of what they know about history and the meaning of things through screens.

They have seen the movie and not read the book. They’ve heard the sound bite but not read the speech. They read the headline on Drudge or the Huffington Post and then jump to another site with more headlines. Their understanding of history, even recent history, is therefore superficial.  Here is the problem:  If those trying to make history have only a shallow sense of history, they will not be able to make anything good.

They came to maturity in the internet age and have filled much of their brain-space with information that came in the form of pictures and sounds. They learned, that is, through sensation, and not through books, which demand something deeper from your brain.

Reading books forces you to imagine, question, ponder, reflect, connect one historical moment with another. Reading books provides a deeper understanding of political figures and events, of the world — of life itself.

Watching a movie about the Cuban Missile Crisis shows you a drama. Reading histories of it presents you with a dilemma.  The book forces you to imagine the color, sound, tone and tension, the logic of events:  It makes your brain do work.

But, oddly, it’s work the brain wants to do.

A movie or documentary is received passively: You sit back, see and hear.  Books demand more and reward more. When you read them your knowledge base deepens and expands.  In time that deepening comes to inform your own work, sometimes in ways of which you’re not fully conscious.

Not to put too fine a point, but your brain gets bigger, stronger. You become smarter and deeper.  That happens with books.

In the past two years I talked to three young presidential candidates — people running for president of the United States, real grown-ups —who, it was clear to me by the end of our conversations, had, in their understanding of modern political history, both figuratively and literally seen the movie and not read the book.  Two of them, I’ve come to know, can recite whole pages of dialogue from movies.  (I will tell you parenthetically that it is interesting to me that the movies our politicians most love are “The Godfather” Parts I and II.  In case you haven’t seen them, both movies are masterpieces and both are about gangsters involved in organized crime.  Make of that what you will.

Another candidate for president by the way stated that his two favorite books were the bible and the Art of the Deal.  I’ll let you guess who that was.

What I’m really saying is that almost everyone involved in politics or covering politics now…is getting dumber. They’re getting lost in a sea of dumb.  They may drown in it.  You must help them — they need you to help them, to be better than that, to set an example.  They are involved in the making of history…and yet some are “historical illiterates”, which is David McCullough’s phrase.  He of course is the great American historian of our time, and he would know.  He’s written brilliant histories the past 40 years and recently was asked, “Apart from Harry Truman and John Adams, what other presidents have you interviewed?”

People in politics now are getting what they know through the internet, through Google searches and Wikipedia. These can give you a certain sense of things but are by nature quick, lifeless and shallow reads that link to other quick, dry and shallow reads that everyone else has also read.  Who wrote them?  Nobody quite knows.  And what you see is often presented at a slant.  They put forward as fact what are really the biases or limited knowledge of the writer.  It all becomes a big lying loop.  Or at least a big, un-nourishing, inadequate one.

And they leave out this fact: history is human.  History is not dry dates and data, and it is not gossip or cheap stuff, it is human beings acting — sometimes heroically, sometimes inadequately or wickedly — in real time.

So: I am become an evangelist for reading books, especially history and poetry but novels too, fiction or non-fiction, whatever you’re drawn to.  But try to be open to a lot — let life summon you through books, be open to its summoning.

I know this:

If you cannot read deeply you will not be able to think deeply.

If you cannot think deeply you will not be able to lead well.

And all of you deep down, in whatever areas and whatever ways, hope to lead.

So:  Unplug and read every day. You stop at least three times a day to eat   Stop at least once a day to read.  You can also, I’m here to tell you, read while you are eating.

Here are some things you will get from it.

Information is more likely to be received and retained by the relaxed mind.  Reading is by its nature relaxing. You’re not furiously scrolling down, you’re not hitting refresh, you’re not fighting off pop-ups, not surfing in search of likes, retweets, elusive approbation.  It’s just you and your book, which unfolds before you, at your speed.  It’s tactile.  Hold the book in your hand, underline it, write notes on the margins, interact to the point even of defacement, it’s okay. Live with them for a while.  Carry the paperback in your pocket.

You must read so you don’t wind up with a head full of data you are unable to process. You process facts, data and information with the help of wisdom.  Wisdom is to be got through life experience — and books.

America is increasingly a land of communication.  We’re all talking — we talk a lot — we’re writing memos, trying to inspire office workers, making the pitch to the client, conferring with the patient, speaking at the symposia, we’re making the deal.

If you hope to be a writer, here’s what will happen if you read books: you can be a writer.  The author’s subject matter –history or poetry or a novel — will enter your mind.  Suddenly the reality of a style will insinuate itself without your even fully noticing.  It’s Murray Kempton’s style or Robert Frost’s — it’s David McCullough’s style or Willa Cather’s — but it will enter your mind and settle in.  Which means a way of looking at the world, of viewing and of processing the true nature of life, will enter your mind.  You will begin not to react but to ponder, to reflect.

You will imagine how Scott Fitzgerald’s Riviera looked along with him — you won’t be able not to — or how the stream and the small fire in Hemingway’s Nick Adams stories looked, and how the trout tasted.

These things will form colonies in your head.  They will take up space and hold up a flag.  They will say “I am the neural matter that is Emily Dickinson.’  ‘I am the cognitive territory of Leo Tolstoy, and I know what he said.’

It will change how your very mind works.  And in some magical way the deep thoughts of others give a spark to, and almost give permission to, thoughts of your own that had been lurking about but never had the courage to present themselves…

Books helped reveal myself to me.  I know that it was a book, Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, read in college, that began to reveal to me that I was a political conservative.  It was books — Saints for Sinners, and great biographies of Teresa of Avila and the Cure of Ars — that helped me understand that I was a Catholic and believed it all.  It was the first book I remember reading, a childrens’ biography of the Mayo Brothers, that provided, when I was 7 or 8, a breakthrough.  When I got to the last page I burst into tears — not because it was a sad story but because the story had ended.  Looking back, maybe this suggested to me that there was something about reading and writing that might figure in my future…

I earn a living writing a column each week only because I read books.  I follow the news to know what’s happening, but I read books to understand what’s happening.

At some point in my late thirties I stopped reading fiction and turned almost exclusively to history and biography.  I don’t know why. I think a youth reading novels was a search for the answer to the question “What is life like?”  The history and biography is:  “What happened?  How did it end?  How did we get through it?  What can I learn that will help me understand the world?”  I find now I go off on tears — a winter reading every book I can find on the Civil War, a summer devoted to the French Revolution, a few months on the Russia of Catherine the Great.

Finally there is the sheer comfort of it. When history turns murky I focus on crises and difficult eras that demanded wisdom to navigate.  I try to understand what a crisis IS, how to look at human agency, who made it a little better, who made it a little worse –.

But lately for no special reason, and yet of course for special and particular reasons, I have gone back to the stories of journalists living through history, especially columnists living through big history, such as Walter Lippmann, and Dorothy Thompson. I am re-reading their biographies.  How did they withstand the pressure of sharing their thoughts in public when the stakes were high?  How did they handle being wrong, and embarrassed?  What part of their brain and wit did they use to understand or misunderstand fascism, Hitler, communism, the beginnings of the Cold War.  I reach back to the daily drama of those trying, in their way, to lead in this great disputatious nation.

And so my friends you will be texting today.  You’ll be saying we’re at Brookland Pint, we’re at Busboys, come join us.  You are making the plans of life and about to have fun.  Fun involves logistics.  Text away.

But tomorrow put down the smart phone, put aside the internet of things, find the real and actual THING of things. Read and be taken away in a way that enriches, that strengthens, that makes you smarter, more serious, more worthy.

Keep it up. Pass it on.  If your generation doesn’t, it will disappear.

Civilization depends on it.

And so ends my chance to give you the advice the singing schoolchild made, unknowingly, to a bright, semi-wayward young man who would become a great one.  “Pick up the book, take up the book” the schoolchild sang.  And the man who would become St Augustine did, and changed himself, and changed our world.

Good fortune and high honors to the great and fabled class of 2017 of the Catholic University of America, in Washington, District of Columbia, in the United States of America.  God bless you and keep you.”

[To read Ms. Noonan’s full address, please click here.]

 

A Culture at Risk

girl w ipadTwo-thirds of U.S. Students Currently Underperform in Literacy Proficiency

Only about one-third of students performed at or above the proficient level in reading in 2015, according to the NAEP, our nation’s report card. The corollary to this is sobering: Nearly 70% of students in the United States are not proficient readers. 

Every two years the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests “representative samples of approximately 279,000 fourth-graders and 273,000 eighth-graders. Results are reported for public and private school students in the nation, and for public school students in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Department of Defense schools. In addition, results are available for 21 participating urban districts.” (nationalreportcard.gov)

Dire Predictions

  •  “…if static literacy levels continue , then by 2030 the entire Literacy Level of the U.S. population will have decreased, creating an American work force that is unequipped and unskilled to work in the demanding global market.” Educational Testing Service (ETS) (Fact About Kids and Reading. balanced reading.com/Scholastic_reading_facts)
  • “Literacy problems in the United States have reached the point of being considered a major public health problem with serious consequences.” Dr. Margot Kelman, The American Speech-Language Hearing Association (Literacy Development in Infants and Toddlers: Research Findings. speech pathology.com).

Targeted Solutions

Our efforts to raise the literacy level in the United States must be targeted where learning begins—in infancy. It is no wonder the American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends that all parents read aloud to their children from birth. Recent findings in brain science prove that infants begin learning at birth and that their senses of touch and hearing actually begin developing en utero (Susan Brink: The Fourth Trimester: Understanding, Nurturing, and Protecting an Infant Through the First Three Months). Physicians and health services in obstetrics and maternity must follow their lead. Right alongside classes on baby care and breastfeeding, parenting education should include the importance of reading, speaking, and singing to a newborn.