How Parents Help Reading Achievement

Most parents understand that having strong reading skills is critical to their child's future. Many parents try to help their child as much as possible to be a better reader — and well they should. Research studies have shown that the amount of parental involvement in children's reading is the number one predictor of reading achievement worldwide. (Postlethwaite and Ross, 1992)

At home, parents model what good readers do by reading novels, magazines, newspapers, and work-related materials in their leisure time. Parents can provide a literacy-rich environment by placing books throughout the house — in the child's bedroom, the family room, the kitchen, and yes, the bathroom! All of these factors can significantly affect the amount of reading a child does on a daily basis.

NAEP studies have shown that at every level, students who read more pages in school and at home had higher reading scores. A classic study by Anderson, Wilson, and Fielding (1988) found that the amount of reading students did in and out of school was positively related to their reading achievement. Fifth graders who read 40 minutes a day acquired almost four times the vocabulary of students who read only 12 minutes a day. Foertsch (1992) collected NAEP (1988 and 1990) data from a sample of about 38,000 students and found that students whose family encouraged reading activities at home had higher reading achievement. All these studies show there is a potent relationship between volume of reading and reading achievement.

So, how do we help parents promote voluminous reading? Here is a list of quick tips to get parents involved in increasing the amount of reading done at home.

Schedule a family night. This year, offer parent workshops on how to read books to their child. The Reading Starts With Us program provides ready-to-go, easy, and effective workshops that explore various literary genres.

Parents learn enjoyable ways to read and talk about books with their children. Reading Starts With Us workshops help promote stronger bonds between parent and child. The workshops create a link between the home and school environments that promotes the value of reading and discussing books. Workshops also promote an enjoyable and useful social network for parents. Parents can share their experiences and culture with the other parents and teachers.

Invite parents to read to their child's class. Keep a photo album of each parent reading to the class.

Teachers can get to know parents and their child by sending them an invitation to write and "tell me about your child." Parents will provide wonderful insights into their child and his home. This conversation could be continued throughout the year in the form of a dialogue journal. What a wonderful keepsake!

Encourage parents to read to their child everyday. Even older students enjoy being read to. Recent research has proven the importance of reading aloud to children before they enter kindergarten. Programs like Building Language for Literacy and the Scholastic Early Childhood Program help immerse children in language and offer suggestions for helping parents support their young learners early literacy.

Establish a book loan program. Research has shown that children will read more if they are allowed to choose their own titles and if they have a large number of books from which to choose. The more books that are available, the more choices a student will have. Scholastic Classroom Libraries offer a wide selection of titles, authors, and genres. When gathering books for your lending library, be sure to include both nonfiction and fiction books on a variety of topics. Place the lending library in a heavily traveled location to make it easily accessible to parents and their children. You can find books for every reader in the Teacher Store@scholastic.com.

Encourage all your teachers to create and maintain a class web page. A class web page can help keep parents and children up-to-date on homework assignments, class news, current events, and booklists. Parents and children can also use the email feature as a way of keeping connected to the teacher. With the Scholastic Class Homepage Builder, teachers can also provide links to Parent Guides on a variety of topics and age-specific information on how to support reading at home.