The Power of Reading, Steven Krashen. The result of decades of original research and an excellent and well organized compilation of others’ findings in the field of children’s literacy and reading.

The Read Aloud Handbook, Jim Trelease. Engaging work on the importance of reading aloud to children, reading in general. Includes a wonderful master list and descriptions of great read-aloud titles for every age group.

The Literacy Crisis: False Claims, Real Solutions, Jeff McQuillan An excellent, well researched and thoughtful look at several education & reading myths, and an articulate explanation of what can be the best solutions to the real educational challenges we face.

Book Trust - Supporting Literature from the Field

Illiteracy and Poverty, Education and Crime are Critically Interconnected

1. 82% of prison inmates are school dropouts.

Hodgkinson, Harold L., The Same Client: The Demographics of Education and Service Delivery Systems [Washington, DC: Institute of Educational Leadership/Center for Demographic Policy, 1989, p. 15]

2. Inmates are twice as likely to be ranked in the bottom levels of literacy as the general population.

[Paul E. Barton and Richard J. Coley, “Captive Students: Education and Training in America’s Prisons.”]

3. The higher a state’s high school graduation rate, the smaller its prison population.

[Hodginson, The Same Client, p. 16]

5. For each person who is moved from the status of high school dropout to graduate, these annual savings occur by age 30:

                Social programs (jail, Medicaid, food stamps, etc.): $4,121
                Increase in graduate’s tax payment: $1,617
                Increase in disposable income: $2,449
[Georges Vernez, Richard Krop, and C. Peter Ryde, “Closing the Education Gap: Benefits and Costs,”  RAND Corporation (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation 1999), p. 143]

Having the opportunity to choose what you read, and having a rich selection of books at home are critical to enjoying reading and having a successful education.
 

1. In neighborhoods where children tend do do poorly in school, 61% of low achieving students had no books in their homes.

[Dina Feitelson and Zahava Goldstein, “Patterns of Book Ownership and Reading to Young Children in Israeli School-Oriented and Nonschool Oriented Families,”  The Reading Teacher, May 1986, pp.924-30]

2. “It is only by wading into [the] stream of print that [children] will discover the subject that will pull them deeper into print.”

[Jim Trelease, The Read Aloud Handbook, Penguin Books 2001, p. 115]

3. Fostering interest in voluntary reading requires that children have some autonomy in choosing the texts to be read as well as access to a substantial quantity of books that vary on several dimensions including difficulty, genre, topic, and length…[these are] all important features of efforts to promote greater voluntary reading, especially among lower-achieving students.[it. mine]

[Allington, A.  and Allington, R.; Lost Summers: Few Books and Few Opportunities to Read, Reading Rockets, 2004]

4. As a child advances in elementary school, it becomes increasingly imperative to allow her the opportunity to choose her own books if the goal is continued engagement in reading in and outside of the classroom.  In kindergarten, a margin of 7% of children reported they read books they had chosen more than books chosen for them; by sixth grade, that margin had grown to 68%.

[Schatz, Adrienne; Assessments from the 2004/2005 program; Book Trust Fort Collins] 

5. “From the onset [of FVR], the students have demonstrated some exciting and favorable behavior changes – such as independent decision-making, self-discipline, sharing…and broadened reading interests.  The children seem to delight in the adultlike responsibility of selecting their own reading matter.”

[Martha Efta, “Reading in Silence” Treating Exceptional Children, Fall 1978, pp. 12-24]

6. FVR is no quick fix, but can result in positive changes in attitude toward the library, voluntary reading, assigned reading, and the importance of reading.  This affects the amount students read and thus their facility with the process.

[Sadoski, Mark; An Attitude Survey for Sustained Silent Reading Programs, Journal of Reading; May, 1980, pp. 721-26]

7. The most successful way to improve the reading achievement of low-income children is to increase their access to print.

[Newman, Sanford, et all. "American's Child Care Crisis: A Crime Prevention Tragedy"; Fight Crime: Invest in Kids, 2000.]

1. Cinda Lou Kochen at the University of Colorado conducted a study of the relationship between home literary environment, parental education level, socioeconomic level, ethnicity, and reading achievement. This study showed that home literary environment, including the number of books children have in the home, surpasses all the other variables in predicting reading achievement.

 

1. Harvard's Jeanne Chall and Catherine Snow reported that the lack of a home library is a critical factor in the reading gap between low- and middle-income children. They found that the gap in reading achievement widens as these two groups progress through school, because the low-income children simply do not have enough books with which to practice.

1. Paul T. Wilson writes in "Reading Education Report" that reading time emerges consistently as the best predictor of fifth-grade comprehension, vocabulary size, reading speed, and gains in comprehension between the second and the fifth grades: "If the goal of a more literate America is to be achieved, children must be given opportunities to read, motivation to read, and access to books."

 

1. "The Impact of Home Literary Environment on Reading Attitude," by Harlan Hansen, concludes that the number of books available to a child predicts the child's fourth-grade reading scores better than the child's socioeconomic status does.

1. "In Their Own Words: What Elementary Students Have to Say about Motivation to Read," by Patricia S. Koskinen, finds four significant factors that influence students' motivation to read: Books had been read to them; They heard about the book from others; They had access to the book through ownership or classroom library; and they got to choose the book.

 

Reading More Means Reading Better; those who do not read much cannot get better at it.

1. Free Voluntary Reading allows a person to read long enough and far enough so the act of reading becomes automatic.  If one must stop to concentrate on each word, then fluency is lost along with meaning.  It is also fatiguing.  Being able to do it automatically is the goal.

[Stephen Krashen, The Power of Reading (Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 1993)]

2. When the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) compared the reading skills of 210,000 students from thirty-two different countries, it found the highest scores (regardless of income level) among children who were read to by their teachers daily, and who read the most pages for pleasure daily. [it. Mine]]

[Warwick B. Elley, How in the World Do Students Read?  (Hamburg: International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, July 1992)

3. Those children whose reading scores were ranked in the 90th percentile read an average of 38 minutes per day outside of school – compared to those in the 10th percentile, who read only 1.1 minutes per day.  When it comes to processing words and building fluency, those in the 90th percentile were exposed to over 2.2 million words more than those in the 10th.

[Richard Anderson, Linda Fielding, and Paul Wilson, “Growth in Reading and How Children Spend Their Time Outside of School,”  Reading Research Quarterly, Summer 1998, pp.285-303]

4. "Good readers read three times as many words per day, with 70% of their reading done silently, while the poor readers do their 70% orally.  A study of 14 high- and low-achievement schools showed a negative correlation to the amount of oral reading but a large positive connection to the amount of silent reading.  Having to do large amounts of oral reading by poorer readers slows them down and widens the gap between themselves and better readers...[Free Vountary Reading] offers a welcome respite from the interruptions, assessments, and oral performances.  Poor readers will be free to read a book for the purpose for which it was written - to be enjoyed and/or absorbed." - Jim Trelease, Read Aloud Handbook

[Allington, Richard L., The Reading Instruction Provided Readers of Differing Reading Abilities, The Elementary School Journal, vol. 83 no. 15, May 1983; pp.548-59]

5. In South Africa and Sri Lanka: In all cases, children who were encouraged to read for pleasure outperformed traditionally taught students on standardized tests of reading comprehension and other measures of literacy.

[Elley, Warwick B. Raising literacy levels in third world countries: A method that works, Language Education Associates, Culver City; 1998]

6. Adult native English speakers read A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, a novel that contains 241 words from a slang called nadsat.  Each nadsat word is repeated an average of 15 times.  Few readers know these words before reading the book.  The versions of the book sold in bookstores have a dictionary in the back, so readers can look up the meanings of the nadsat words.

 

In this study, subjects were simply asked to read A Clockwork Orange and were told that after they finished it, they would be given a test of comprehension and literary criticism.  They were not told to try to learn or remember the nadsat words.  What is crucial is that they were given copies of the book without the dictionary in the back.  The subjects read the book on their own time and reported finishing it in three days or less.  A few days later, subjects were given a multiple-choice test covering 90 of the nadsat words.

A great deal of vocabulary acquisition took place.  Scores ranged from 50% - 96% correct, with an average of 76% - subjects picked up at least 45 words, simply by reading a novel.
[Saragi, Y., Nation, P., and Meister, G.; Vocabulary learning and reading, System; 1978, issue 6; pp 70-78]

7. In a six-week study of self-selected reading among 200 sixth graders attending summer school because of low reading proficiency; 30% were limited English proficient; comparison children followed a standard language arts curriculum: The readers gained approximately five months on the Altos test of reading comprehension and vocabulary over the six-week period, while comparisons declined.  On the Nelson-Denny reading comprehension test, the readers grew well over one year.  On the vocabulary section, however, the groups showed equivalent gains.

[Shin, F., Motivating students with Goosebumps and other popuar books, CSLA Journal (California School Library Association;) 2001, issue 25(1), pp. 15-19]

8. One long-term study reported no significant correlations between amount of explicit vocabulary instruction and gains in reading comprehension and vocabulary over four years.  The exclusive use of a basal reader or workbook in reading lessons was negatively correlated with gains in reading comprehension.

[Snow, Barnes, Chandler, Goodman, and Hemphill, 1991]

Reading More Means Learning a Second Language Quicker and More Fluently

1. In one study of immigrant women (Korean and Spanish speakers) with poor English and reading skills, after being given one month to read the 2nd grade level children’s series “Sweet Valley Kids,” all became enthusiastic readers and demonstrated greater reading proficiency, vocabulary, and speaking ability.

Stephen Krashen and Kyung-Sook Cho, “Acquisition of Vocabulary from the Sweet Valley Kids Series: Adult [ESL Acquisition,” Journal of Reading, May 1994, pp. 662-67; (similar results were accomplished in the Sponse English Language Program at the University of Southern California-Los Angeles using Harlequin Romances)]

2. Two groups of adult ESL students were tested on unknown words contained in Animal Farm.  One group memorized the list by rote; the second read the book.  The readers were not aware they would be tested on the vocabulary.  When tested after one week, those who memorized the list did better, but after three weeks there was no difference between the groups.  Those who did rote memorization forgot words between the two tests, but the readers actually improved their scores.

 

[Hermann, F.; Differential effects of reading and memorization of paired associates on vocabulary acquisition in adult learners of English as a second language, TESL-EJ, Issue 7(1), Pages A-1, 2003]

3. Students of Spanish as a foreign language in the U.S. were tested on their knowledge of the subjunctive, a verb form that students of Spanish usually find very difficult to master.  The test probed subjects' ability to use the subjunctive in a real situation, not simply whether they knew the rule.  Subjects were not informed that the subjunctive was the focus of the test.  The only significant predictor of the ability to use the subjunctive was the amount of free voluntary reading done in Spanish; the amount of formal study of Spanish, formal study specifically aimed at the subjunctive, and how long subjects had lived in a Spanish speaking country were not significant predictors of subjunctive competence.

[Stokes, J., S. Krashen, and J. Kartchner; Factors in the acquisition of the present subjunctive in Spanish: The role of reading and study; ITL: Review of Applied Linguistics; 1998, issue 121-122, pp. 19-25]

4. Japanese students who had previously failed a required English class were pre-and posttested with a cloze test, which required them to fill in missing words in an English text.  For one semester, students in the experimental class read graded readers, both in class and as homework.  There was some "accountability" in these classes, but it was minimal: Students had to write short synopses and keep a diary in Japanese, recording their feelings, opinions, and progress.  Students in the comparison classes followed the traditional grammar and translation based curriculum. 

 

The 'extensive readers' group began the semester with much lower test scores in English reading, but made larger gains than the traditional group and nearly caught up with them by the end of the semester.

From Krashen, 2004: "Perhaps the most important and impressive finding of this study is the clear improvement in attitude shown by the students who did extensive reading.  Many of the once reluctant students of English became eager readers.  Several wrote in their diaries that they were amazed at their improvement.  Their diaries also indicated that they understood the stories.
[Mason, Beniko; Evidence for the sufficiency of extensive reading on the development of grammatical accuracy; Temple University, Osaka; 1993]

Reading more means doing better in other areas – including math and science

1. Skills necessary for developing informational literacy - research, evaluation of sources, technology, etc. - can only stem from reading and critical thinking.

[Association of College and Research Libraries; Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, 2005.;

2. “[We] conducted a study to see if the hypothesis that “Good reading skills are necessary in order to succeed in developmental math” is true.  Common sense and logic concur with the assumption that an individual must be able to read well if he/she is going to pursue academics very far at all.  Our analysis of 2,336 Victoria College students enrolled in Math 0300, 0301, and 0303 over three consecutive academic years supports the hypothesis further.

 

Key findings include:

* The distribution of A’s was consistently greatest for those students with the highest Reading TASP scores and the distribution of F’s was consistently greatest for those students with the lowest Reading TASP scores
* The differences were most profound in Math 0300 where the distribution of A’s was four times as great in the Reading TASP 230+ group as in the <200 group and the distribution of F’s was more than three times as great in the lowest reading TASP group as in the Reading TASP 230+ group
* None of the Math 0303 “Intermediate Algebra” students with the lowest Reading TASP scores earned the grade of “A”
* The ability to read also has a significant bearing on where a student begins his/her sequence of developmental math courses.  The lowest scoring readers made up 18% of the Math 0300 enrollment, 9% of the Math 0301 enrollment, and 5% of the Math 0303 enrollment.  While the highest scoring readers made up 59% of the Math 0300 enrollment, 74% of the Math 0301 enrollment, and 84% of the Math 0303 enrollment.  
[The Victoria College - Office of Institutional Research and Planning, Reading Skills and Success in Developmental Math; Fall 1996-1999.  Also, McGhan, Barry; MEAP: Mathematics and the Reading Connection, Center for Public School Renewal, 1995]

3. (to be combined with West, Stanovich, and Mitchell 1993; and Stanovich & West 1991): West and Stanovich created a cultural literacy test, a checklist of 30 names of artists, entertainers, explorers, philosophers, and scientists.  Those who had more print exposure did better on this test, even when other factors, such as SAT scores (W&S '91), age, education, exposure to television (W, S, &M 1993), and nonverbal abilities (S, W, & M 1995) were controlled.

[Stanovich, K. E., West, R. F., & Harrison, M. R. (1995). Knowledge growth and maintenance across the life span: The role of print exposure. Developmental Psychology, 31, 811-826]

 

http://www.reading.org – International Reading Association “For 50 years, the International Reading Association has been a professional home for those who help others learn to read. Today, our network and resources reach hundreds of thousands of teachers, researchers, students, administrators, tutors, parents, and others—in every part of the world.”

http://www.readingonline.org – Electronic journal of the International Reading Association

http://www.literacy.org – (International scope)“Literacy.org is a gateway to electronic resources and tools for the national and international youth and adult literacy communities.”

http://www.famlit.org – National Center for Family Literacy: “The mission of the National Center for Family Literacy is to create educational and economic opportunity for the most at-risk children and parents.”

http://www.nifl.org – ‘National Institute for Literacy’ (adult focus): “Most of NIFL's funds support programs and services designed to improve the quality of literacy programs nationwide.”

This can by no means be a comprehensive list of the many excellent programs working to improve children’s literacy. Here are some we have found; if you know of another, please let us know.

Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) RIF's National Book Program offers children a choice of 2-5 books per year and bases their program on three principles: "book ownership, motivational activities, and family involvement in children's reading."

First Book, National. From their site: "The primary goal of First Book is to work with existing literacy programs to distribute new books to children who, for economic reasons, have little or no access to books"

Raising a Reader, California, national, some international. Program features red bags of books rotated through children's classrooms, day care facilities, etc.

Page Ahead, Washington State. From their site: "Providing new books and promoting reading activities for at-risk children to enrich their lives and strengthen our communities"

Raising Readers, Maine. From their site: "Raising Readers promotes reading to young children between birth and age 5 by giving them books as part of their regular well child health care."

Reach Out and Read, National. From their site: "Reach Out and Read (ROR) is a program that promotes early literacy by bringing new books and advice about the importance of reading aloud into the pediatric exam room."

Imagination Library, National. A program of the Dollywood Foundation; from their site: "from the day they are born, children who register for the program receive a book every month until their fifth birthday."