On the radio the other day I heard public service announcement for Read Across America or some sort of literacy program. One of the statistics they threw out that I caught was that children from low income homes will have heard 32 million fewer words - thus a handicapped vocabulary - by the time they are 4 years old, and they "never" make it up. In fact, showing up with 32 million fewer words can make it difficult for the child to even understand what the teacher is trying to communicate! This astounded me. There was something said too about the correlation between the amount of books in the home and the ability to read/vocabulary. So I tried to look online for info on this. I found a couple studies, sources.
This first source is talking about kids getting "dumber" over the summer when they don't read, but the information resonates for the entire year:
" . . . the at-risk child's summer includes: a home without books, magazines or newspapers, and without adults who read avidly; no car by which to leave a dangerous neighborhood; no bookstores or a convenient library; a daily routine in which the child seldom meets new people, new experiences, or new vocabulary, thus no growth in background knowledge; and little likelihood that educational or informational TV or radio will be seen or heard.
The adage "If you don’t use it, you lose it," proves true for children who live these kinds of summers. Without printed material and without new experiences, the reading skills grow rusty and atrophy.
How to prevent the traditional summer reading gap? The research gives little support to traditional summer school, but a great deal to summer reading—reading to the child and reading by the child. Jimmy Kim's study of 1,600 sixth-graders in 18 schools showed that the reading of four to six books during the summer was enough to alleviate summer loss. He further noted that when schools required either a report/essay be written about a book read during the summer or that parents verify a student had read one summer book, this increased greatly the chances of it being read.21
Most libraries have summer reading incentive programs, so make sure your child is enrolled and participates. And take your child on field trips—even if you just visit local places like a fire station, the museum, or the zoo, and talk and listen. One of the most original solutions I've heard is this one from Paul E. Barton, senior associate in the Policy Evaluation and Research Center at ETS, and someone who has researched and written extensively on the subject of poverty and schooling, from preschool to prisons. Barton knows full well the scarcity of books in the lives of poor children and it provoked him to tell USA Today that at-risk communities should be making bookmobiles or traveling libraries "as ubiquitous as the Good Humor man."
It really made me think how fantastic it is that JW kids from the time they are conceived until they are 4 hear and read an amazing number of words because of the sheer amount of studying and prep we do for meetings, and then actually hearing information/vocabulary used AT the meetings. We are always, always, always encouraged by the Watchtower to read outloud and with our children. Our life as JWs also incorporates all the things the quote suggests - new experiences, new people, all the time, from field service to assemblies to conventions - to get togethers. We certainly have available a word rich and experience rich environment for our children.
If you want to read more and find the sources, this is a link to a Read-Aloud Handbook website that will give you footnotes to the sources. http://www.trelease-on-reading.com/rah-ch1-pg3.html
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