Imagine a newborn. Now imagine the amount of reading time spent with that child before entering kindergarten. What are the impacts of this on the child's development? If you are a kindergarten teacher you know what I am talking about and even if you are not it is still probably common sense to most. But, for some it is still not a priority. So how can we share with our parents what must be done to combat gaps in achievement before formal education ever begins? I started sharing a simple, and somewhat exaggerated, model of the differences in achievement based on reading to a baby for two minutes a day versus thirty minutes a day. My goal in doing such an extreme comparison was designed to help create a vicarious experience of the impact over such a short period of time on a child's ability. I share this with as many parents as will listen to me and when I taught English I used this model to encourage my students to read more, as well as to encourage them to read more to their younger siblings.
OK, for the sake of simplicity there are a few assumptions made, but you will get the idea. A baby is born and his parents read to him for two minutes a day, thus he will have 14 minutes a week and 728 total minutes of reading his first year of life. Another baby is born and her parents read to her child for thirty minutes a day during her first year of life. She will have 210 minutes per week and 10,920 minutes of reading time during her first year! Now lets imagine this pattern continues for five years leading up to the first day of kindergarten. The two minute boy will have only accumulated a total of 3,640 minutes of time spent being read to while the 30 minute girl will have accumulated a whooping 54,600 minutes of time spent being read to! If this were the case the size of the achievement gap before ever hitting the school door is unbelievable.
Like I stated before it is an extreme exaggeration, but it is meant to show how large the gap in achievement can become without even realizing it. Susan Hill states that "if help is given in fourth grade, rather than in late kindergarten, it takes four times as long to improve the same skills by the same amount." What I want to advocate for is encouraging our parents to step up as early as possible to keep these deficits from ever occurring in the first place. As educators we understand the importance of language development during the early years of a baby's life. What we need to be reminded of is that a lot of our parents may not. In today's schools educators are well versed in research, but our parents in high poverty areas are most likely not. It is important to share with them a reason why it is important to read to their child from day one in order to motivate them to act before delays occur.
So what do you think? I would love your feedback on the 2 versus 30 model as well as what you see in your classrooms or with your parents. I would be interested in what you may have to deal with when attempting to educate parents on their child's needs. I am a firm believer that we will continue to struggle in our attempts to educate some of the children in our schools until we work harder to educate the parents of our school community.
4 comments:
@ Ed
An interesting post. I tend to side with the elasticity of young minds camp. I think they can overcome major deficiencies. I worry that Kindergarten has become first grade and we tend to ignore innate learning differences between boys and girls. The nation that seems to wow everyone with their educational prowess is Finland. Interesting how the Finns don't star formal education until the age of 7.
If anything parents who spend time reading with their children show their children they care about them and that they are loved. Just spending actual time engaged with our own children is a huge head start.
A very interesting post, and speaking from a kindergarten teacher and parent perspective, I wholeheartedly agree that reading to kids is vital and perhaps underestimated in value by many parents. It can be hard to educate parents whose many priorities pull them in so many directions. I also try to help parents understand that time spent in oral storytelling, playing together, and various other ways of supporting language development can be a wonderful adjunct to reading. Anything we can do to work as a team with parents, supporting the goal of developing kids to be the best they can be is great. Thanks for addressing this issue!
@Ed
Great thoughts and good example. Interesting studies have been done on the number of words children are exposed to depending on their SES. The gaps are huge. Reading to our children is extremely important to expose them to the language, show them that reading in important, and to spend quality time with them. I also believe that children need to see their parents reading for themselves, it will help turn their children into adults that read!
Good post but young parents should include some numeracy related games and activities as the youngsters are going to need that skill taught before they get to school as well.
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