learning to read

Book Smart: Kids and Reading

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

A few years ago, we did a Child(ish) Reads on a book called Thirty Million Words by Dana Suskind, M.D.  Its core concept is based on the research by Betty Hart and Todd Risley who, in 1995, found that by the age of three, children from higher-income families hear about 30 million more words than those from lower-income families. This disparity plays a substantial role in shaping academic outcomes and long-term success.

This topic has become top of mind this year as our school board is aligning its priorities with Georgia’s Early Literacy Legislation, which aims to ensure all children become proficient readers by the end of third grade. So why third grade?

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I Think We Need a Tutor

| Patti Webb

Every night, not unusually, Troy and I read to A&Z before bed. We had done a bit of a library purge and made sure that they had a variety of Early Reader and Beginner Chapter books, having already gone through all of our picture books. Now that the girls were older, I wanted to make sure the girls were being challenged by the material, instead of reading the same books over and over.

We switched to reading aloud together and let the girls alternate pages or passages. That’s when what used to be an understandable gap turned into one of our kids falling behind.

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The Audio-Visual Club: Kids and Audiobooks

| Mary Stoffel, MOT, OTR/L

“I want people to stop saying, ‘I didn’t really read it, I just listened.’ Stop that. If you listened, you read it. There’s no right way to absorb a book.” – Reese Witherspoon

I enjoy reading a physical book. My husband, however, does not. He prefers putting on his headphones and listening on Audible. He told me that he’s “read” three books over the summer. He’s not the only one in my social circle to count listening to an audiobook as reading. Friends will tell me they’ve read a 560-page novel over the weekend (you what?!) and then clarify that they listened to it during their road trip. Even Patti will simultaneously juggle multiple books for her book club and Child(ish) Reads posts, a feat made easier with paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats.

As audiobooks become more mainstream, it got me thinking about the trickle-down to kids. Is listening to a book the same as reading one? Can children benefit from this type of auditory medium or would it hinder their ability to read? Inquiring minds would like to know.

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