Read to All Kids - It's Good for Them

Everyone loves to hear a story. And every kid loved being read to in elementary school. So, the question is, why do we stop? A new study has found that reading to kids of all ages has positive benefits and encourages them to read on their own.

The finding about reading aloud to children long after toddlerhood may come as a surprise to some parents who read books to children at bedtime when they were very young but then tapered off. Last summer, the American Academy of Pediatrics announced a new policy recommending that all parents read to their children from birth.“A lot of parents assume that once kids begin to read independently, that now that is the best thing for them to do,” said Maggie McGuire, the vice president for a website for parents operated by Scholastic.But reading aloud through elementary school seemed to be connected to a love of reading generally. According to the report, 41 percent of frequent readers ages 6 to 10 were read aloud to at home, while only 13 percent of infrequent readers were being read to.

I try to read regularly to my classes, even though they are AP English students. Whether it's as a starting point for a quick read, or a passage from one of the novels we're reading, or simply an interesting article I found in the paper. One year, I even read the entire first novel of Harry Potter out loud to my class of juniors, a few pages a day.

It was amazing how it captivated them.