Benefits of reading aloud to children
The benefits of reading aloud to your kids : NPR
The benefits of reading aloud to your kids It's not always easy to convince kids that reading isn't a chore. But reading aloud can help. Here are a few ways to help you find joy — and value — in reading aloud as a family.
How reading aloud can help you bond with your kids and make them better readers
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We've all heard about the benefits of learning to read quietly and independently. A big part of learning at school is all about reading, but it's not always easy to find time for more reading at home.
Families have busy schedules filled with after-school activities and homework. Plus — let's be honest — with all the tech at kids' fingertips and school days already filled with required reading, it can be hard convincing kids that reading isn't a chore.
But Keisha Siriboe says there is a way, and it doesn't have to be independent or quiet! Her solution: reading aloud as a family.
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Siriboe is a Baltimore-based early childhood literacy consultant with a Ph.D. in early childhood education. She has researched education strategies and student leadership development all over the world and says reading aloud can help people with stress management, hope and resilience.
Reading aloud is the best bang for your buck, Siriboe says, adding that she hasn't seen anything yet that gives a higher return on investment.
The emotional benefits of reading aloud
Reading with your child is a practice that creates space for deeper independent learning and exploring.
It doesn't matter if it's a traditional book, graphic novel, non-fiction or historical fiction, it all counts. What matters most is taking the time to dive deeper.
Use reading aloud to start conversations that can help your child deal with the now of wherever we are in the world. It could lead to something you may not have expected. For example, when it comes to anxiety and worry, a caregiver could use a picture book that specifically deals with that topic and turn that into an opportunity for a child to share what worries they are carrying.
Reading aloud is one of the few spaces that checks all the boxes in terms of social, emotional and mental health. For Siriboe, the simple act of sharing your love of reading with your child is bigger than just literacy. It's another expression of love and a tool for helping kids navigate the world.
Talk, read, play and sing
There's more to reading with your kids than just the words on the page. Before you dive into reading, try talking with them about the story or topic.
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There's more to reading with your kids than just the words on the page. Before you dive into reading, try talking with them about the story or topic.
miniseries/Getty Images
Siriboe likes to break down the global possibilities of reading into four key components:
Talk. She says take a moment to talk about the subject matter of the book, comic or recipe with your kids. If the book you're going to read is about wellness or meditation, you may want to share some of your favorite breathing exercises or ask your kiddo what coping skills they may have learned at school.
The next component is to read. Start looking at the words, finding the characters, settings and storyline of the book. Explore how the characters in the story engage with each other and their environment.
Then play. Perhaps you and your child want to role-play some scenarios of what the character is experiencing in the real world or explore what it would be like to live inside the character's world.
The last thing is to sing. Come up with your own song or use some online resources to find some silly songs that can help you bring a story to life. Siriboe emphasizes that this whole experience should be filled with joy and laughter.
The goal is to go past the idea of phonetics alone and really think about bonding with your child. That may mean the child gets to lead instead of the adult. At the end of the day, both the caregiver and child should hopefully be having fun.
The benefits of reading aloud for neurodiverse learners
It's important to remember that every child learns differently.
Siriboe says parents may need to think outside the pages of a book to connect and help a neurodiverse child thrive. Allowing kids who learn differently opportunities to experience success within literacy can help build confidence and spark that fire for reading and storytelling.
Every child needs to discover what they like and who they are in the world of a story. If you have a child who loves to paint, you can take them to the museum and have them write down the artists that mean the most to them. Siriboe says the next step is to go to a local library and find books about the art that inspires them and give them a chance to create their version of that art.
Helping kids who may not take to reading
Not everyone takes to reading right away, and many kids struggle. Siriboe says parents need to know that it is probably safe to assume that a kid who doesn't love reading has probably had a negative experience.
The first thing parents can do is help their kiddo shift their perspective.
She says helping kids move from a fixed mindset about what they think their reading ability is into a growth mindset is a good starting place.
Help reassure your kid that they may not be the great reader they aspire to be yet, but they absolutely can do this. One way to do this is to incorporate aural storytelling into the fold. Invite your child to create a story that you, the adult, are willing to write down or help them use a computer or smartphone app that can do it for them while they speak. Siriboe says this helps kids to form a bridge from the inconceivable to the I can do this!
Take the step to start
It's not about how well you read or even what you read. What Siriboe wants families everywhere to know is the act of starting to read aloud and making it part of your routine for 15 minutes a day is what matters most.
Listen to the audio version of this story at the top of this page for more tips from Keisha Siriboe and get insights into what she has learned in her research.
The audio portion of this episode was produced by Andee Tagle, with engineering support from Patrick Murray.
We'd love to hear from you. If you have a good life hack, leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823, or email us at [email protected]. Your tip could appear in an upcoming episode.
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The Importance of Reading Aloud to Kids
While learning to read independently is necessary for a child’s growth and development, there are also many important benefits of reading aloud to your child. This post takes you through some of the key benefits of reading to children and interesting statistics about the impacts of reading aloud! From enhanced literary skills to a stronger parent-child bond between you, there’s no doubt you’ll want to make reading aloud with your child part of your daily routine.
8 Benefits of Reading Aloud
- Enhances their literacy and reading skills
- Enhances their language skills
- Creates a stronger parent-child bond
- Better concentration and discipline
- Improves performance in school
- Widens their imagination
- Promotes healthy brain development
- Keeps them entertained
Enhances Their Literary and Reading Skills
“Let’s have a look and see how this story starts”
This is definitely one of the best benefits of reading aloud to your child! Naturally, the more children are engaged in reading, the stronger their literary and reading skills will become! If children are read aloud to, especially while following along with the book themselves, they will get more and more familiar with wider vocabulary.
Hearing words while seeing them on the page will help your child associate sounds with words, prompting them to become better independent readers when they get older and more confident.
Enhance Their Language Skills
“Look, there’s your name again”
As well as reading and literacy skills, your little one will have much improved language skills if they are read aloud to! If they are engaged with another person during reading time, they’ll learn to communicate with them about the story, rather than keep their thoughts to themselves.
A fantastic study called “Reading Aloud To Children: The Evidence” by E Duursma, M. Augustyn and B. Zuckerman revealed that engaging in “decontextualized” talk while reading aloud is especially great for language enhancement! This means relating the story to the child. For example, if there is ice cream involved in the story, you could say to your child “you like ice cream!” This creates conversation between you and your child, keeps them involved in the story, and hopefully prompts them to continue discussing the book.
It’s definitely one of the best read aloud strategies for parents!
Creates a Stronger Parent-Child Bond
“What do you think, can we help?”
We all know life can be a bit manic sometimes, and we often run out of time to do the things we need to do! While it can be easy to sit your child down in front of the TV, with a game, or on their own with a book, reading aloud with your child for just 20 minutes a day can really strengthen your bond!
Reading aloud to your child lets you spend quality time with them, and your little one will be more engaged with reading if you’re involved too! It gives you the opportunity to enjoy an activity together, which is a special time you’ll really treasure when they’re all grown up! Also, by making reading a fun, joint activity, your little one will be more likely to look forward to story time which in turn will improve their literacy, reading, and language skills even more!
Better Concentration and Discipline
“Oh look, where has he got a lightning?”
If you’re involved in story time with your child, they’re much more likely to concentrate on their book and not be distracted! Hearing your voice will prompt them to focus on the words and absorb the story they’re being told, with their minds less likely to wander elsewhere.
Especially if read aloud time becomes part of a routine for you and your little one, they’re much more likely to get used to concentrating on what they’re doing and make the most out of their reading time.
As we all know, this is a skill that will prove very important in school to help them make the most of their lessons, which leads us on to the next benefit…
Improves Their Performance in School
“What shape is that?”
Research has consistently shown that children who are read aloud to by their parents for as little as 20 minutes a day perform better in school, since they develop skills that put them ahead of their peers! Reading aloud to your little one also helps build their confidence, since it reassures them about the sounds of the words they’re reading, which is important for thriving in a school environment.
From heightened involvement in classroom discussions and better results on tests, reading aloud to your little one will certainly prepare them with the skills they’ll need to do well in school!
Widens Their Imagination
“Horses don’t say Moo, what is it that he should say?”
There’s no better way to let your child’s imagination run wild than with a good book! Sitting down with your child and reading to them can open their minds to a whole new world beyond their own, letting them escape into an exciting story and learn something new! If you read aloud to your child, they’re more likely to become engaged in the story you’re reading and really throw themselves into the adventure.
This is especially great if parents made sound effects or put on voices when reading to their child, since it makes the child feel even more like they are in an exciting new world and engage them fully in the story! This is a fantastic technique for helping open your child’s mind and develop their imaginative skills, which are so necessary for improved thinking!
Promotes Healthy Brain Development
“And what does this say?”
Reading aloud to your child is so important for healthy brain development and is a crucial way they can engage the different parts of their brain! For children of any age, regions in the left part of the brain will be awoken, which helps them understand words and improve their memory.
Being read aloud to also means children will learn to listen and read along at the same time, as well as communicate about the story, which is brilliant for stronger brain development in childhood!
Keeps Them Entertained
“Moooooooo!!”
If you’re looking for new ways to entertain your child, besides playing on tablets or sticking them in front of the TV, then reading aloud is a great way to keep them occupied! While children can often get distracted easily, if you read aloud with your little one, they’ll be sure to be even more engaged in the book they’re reading.
Especially in this digital age, it can be so easy to turn children towards their favorite devices and online games as a way of keeping them entertained. However, reading aloud with your child and engaging with them can give them a sense of achievement and happiness as they feel like they are connecting with you and learning something!
Statistics on Reading Aloud to Your Child
As well as these fantastic benefits, we’ve also got some interesting statistics on reading aloud to your child!
The Kids & Family Reading Report from Scholastic has some fascinating data on reading aloud to children, showing the benefits and rewards of spending this time with your little one. It has also been proven that reading aloud to children doesn’t just have benefits for the child, but actually has positive impacts for the whole family! Pam Allyn, Senior Vice President, stated that:
Read-aloud is a prescription for lifelong success for the child and a dose of deep well-being for the family.
Scholastic discovered that more than 80% of both kids and parents across all income levels love reading aloud, or like it a lot! Also, kids aged 6-11 who actively take part in read-aloud time with their parents by asking questions or making funny noises or sound effects are more likely than other children to become frequent readers.
It’s amazing how engaged children seem to be during read-aloud time! According to the report, 85% of children ask questions during read-aloud time by the time they’re 8 years old, showing that they are really learning and becoming intrigued by story time! Also, 72% of parents have been asking questions when reading aloud to babies and toddlers aged 2 and under, which is brilliant! Asking questions is great for enhancing little ones’ learning further, since it encourages them to listen and communicate with you.
Despite all the wonderful benefits of reading aloud to your child, only 55% of children aged 0-5 are read aloud to at home for at least 5 days a week, and only 37% are read aloud to daily! It’s also been discovered that reading aloud seems to peak when a child is 5 years old, despite reading aloud having so many benefits for older children too.
Parents have declared that read aloud time stops when the child can more confidently read independently, even though continuing to read aloud still has important benefits.
In more positive news, there was an encouraging increase in the number of 6-8 year olds being read aloud to compared to 2016, with the percentage rising from 38% to 45%!
The benefits of reading aloud to your child go far beyond childhood and school life! It’s been discovered that reading aloud to your little one for 20 minutes a day can increase their lifetime earnings by £500,000! This shows that reading aloud has significant benefits that last right through to adulthood and can impact their ability to start a successful career.
8 reasons to read aloud to children
May 31, 2018Life
Reading aloud is not just a good family tradition, but a turbo method of brain development for your child.
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01. Expand vocabulary
The child will learn to speak in any way by listening to the speech of adults.
However, children whose parents read books aloud to them express their thoughts more coherently and colorfully and hold their attention better, because book language is much more complicated than spoken language.
Oleg Ivanov
psychologist, conflictologist, head of the Center for Settlement of Social Conflicts
Reading aloud expands vocabulary, prepares for independent reading, promotes better development of concepts in children.
2. Train memory
When listening to a fairy tale or a poem, a child first remembers the characters and rhythm, and then the meaning of the work. So he gradually develops figurative and verbal-logical memory. To help your baby, ask him what story you have read recently, ask him to tell the key points. The skill of retelling will be useful to him in life. It is also useful to memorize poems.
3. Develop imagination and imaginative thinking
Imagination is a complex cognitive process, the foundations of which are laid up to three years.
At the same time, the scope of fantasy depends on the lived experience. In order not to miss the moment, parents should read books to their children. The events that take place in fairy tales, the brain perceives as experienced in reality. This phenomenon is known as "embodied knowledge".
Nina Shadurova
psychologist and methodologist of the educational center "Plombir"
Listening to a fairy tale, poem or story, a child learns to imagine the described situation, can play it first as it is written, and then change something in it, add something new.
4. Fall in love with reading
A book is the best friend and gift, but only a person who is in love with a book can fall in love with reading. Read to your child with pleasure and expression so that he understands how interesting and great it is to dive into a new unknown world.
5. Broaden your horizons
From children's books we learn about space, animals, people, plants, phenomena.
The child rejoices at any new information, but usually waits for texts on “his” topic. Choose books together so that the baby is more interested in listening to you and developing. Let the child ask questions as he reads: this is how he learns to think logically.
To make your child interested in listening to you, find something that will captivate him. But do not forget to alternate books to broaden your horizons.
Oleg Ivanov
6. Talk about important topics
In fairy tales, children often first encounter the confrontation between good and evil, problems of moral choice, tragedies. Therefore, it is important for the parent not to mechanically read the book, but to try to discuss it with the child. Ask how he would act in the place of the conditional Ivan Tsarevich. So he will become an active listener, develop analytical thinking and empathy.
Book characters can be used to study various behavior patterns of good and evil characters, come up with an alternative ending and thus introduce an element of the game..jpg)
Oleg Ivanov
7. Tune in to sleep
Reading at night is a great family tradition. It strengthens relationships and helps all participants in the process to tune in to a sweet dream. Reading 'can help reduce stress' has been shown to lower heart rate and relax muscles by 68%. So read to your children for at least 15-20 minutes. Especially if you're at work all day.
Yulia Radionova
family psychologist
No matter what happens, the child knows that today mother is reading a fairy tale before going to bed. It helps to calm down, helps to cope with stress, strong emotions.
8. Get distracted and work on yourself
Reading fairy tales to your children helps you switch from work tasks, relieve stress and develop your own speech. Read clearly and with expression, place accents in the sentence. Thus, you improve diction and intonation.
Elena Garanina
psychologist of the FEFU Medical Center
People who regularly read aloud speak more confidently and make fewer speech errors, as a result of which they are perceived as more authoritative and trustworthy.
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Developmental benefits of reading aloud to a child
Psychologists say that babies perceive speech and music while still in the womb. Six-month-old babies listen with interest as their mother reads a fairy tale, although they do not understand its meaning. Studies have confirmed that after four years, such children have more vocabulary than their peers, and subsequently they demonstrate better literacy.
Reading aloud to children is practiced in most families until the child learns to do it on his own. However, it is also useful for younger students. The results of a sociological survey conducted in Moscow among 10,000 parents with children aged 6 to 16 showed that the practice of reading together is a rare occurrence after children become first graders.
Here's what we found out:
- 58% of moms and dads give kids under five the opportunity to listen to books in their own performance;
- 37% continue this occupation with children from five to eight years old;
- this practice persists only in 11% of families with children older than 10 years.
Reading aloud is a kind and useful tradition, an excellent leisure option, undeservedly forgotten today.
Why do children need to read aloud?
There are several reasons why children should read aloud.
- They are expanding their vocabulary. Literary language is much brighter and richer than spoken language. There are often words in books that a person rarely uses in everyday life. If a child listens to one chapter from a fairy tale every day, then he will know more words than his peer, who spends the whole evening at the computer.
- Children train memory. If mom or dad read a book before going to bed, then the child remembers the plot, characters, events.
And the next evening it is easy for him to remember how yesterday's chapter ended. In addition, you can ask your son or daughter to retell part of the work. This will serve as an excellent memory training exercise. - Children develop imagination and imaginative thinking. Listening to a book, the child imagines in his head what is written on paper. He activates his brain in this way.
- A love of reading is instilled. Everyone knows that reading is one of the best and most useful human habits. If a child is accustomed to the fact that in childhood he was regularly read, then in the future he will take up the book himself.
The developmental benefits
The benefits for the child of reading aloud are undeniable. Concerned about the poor academic performance of their son or daughter, parents are looking for developmental activities to correct the situation. But there is an effective cost-saving option: reading aloud to younger students.
Here are just a few predicted results:
- children memorize much more concepts and terms from books than from colloquial speech, therefore their vocabulary increases, which directly affects academic performance;
- fantasy, figurative thinking develops, especially if conversations are held, an opinion is clarified about the further development of the plot, the behavior of the heroes of a literary work;
- family ties are strengthened, a love of reading is instilled;
- diction improves. Parents who have the skills of speed reading are able to present the text with the correct articulation and intonation. Perception of information by ear reveals the richness of the language, improves memory, contributes to a better understanding of the instructions of teachers;
- Reading aloud is one of the means of education. Children can ignore parental instructions about the norms of behavior, but they will definitely learn them using the examples of positive and negative literary characters.
Reading together with children, parents better understand the range of their interests, navigate in their favorite literary genres. Such knowledge cannot be obtained by ordinary questions, since when reading together, the priorities of a son or daughter are revealed naturally. This allows us to form a home library together, to determine additional developmental programs that will be visited with pleasure.
What are the best books to read aloud?
Every child is different. Therefore, when choosing books, you need to be guided by his interests. Some children ask their mother to read the same work several times. There is no need to refuse in this case. If he's hooked, that's good. This means that in his soul there was a response to the book, its characters, the events taking place in it.
Can you remember what interested you when you were little. Tell your son or daughter, “I liked this book as a child. Let's read? Maybe you'll like it too.
