His answer – “If you think about it, in the early years of school,
almost all instruction is oral. The teaching is oral and the kids
with the largest vocabularies have an advantage because they
understand most of what the teacher is saying. The kids with
small vocabularies don’t get what is going on from the start,
and they’re likely to fall further and further behind as time
goes on.”
Trelease also explains the benefits of reading aloud to older
children, saying that a child’s reading level doesn’t catch up
to his listening level until eighth grade, so you can and should
be reading seventh grade books to fifth grade kids. He says, “A
fifth grader can enjoy a more complicated plot that she can read
herself. There is really complicated, serious stuff going on that
kids are ready to hear and understand, even if they can’t read
at that level yet.” He asserts that reading aloud to your older
kids is also a good way to grapple with difficult issues. While
a lecture about choosing good friends may go in one ear and
out the other, hearing a story about a kid who hangs with the
wrong crowd gives you a chance to discuss it together in a less
threatening way.
Trelease advocates even reading to high schoolers. He says
that, even though kids have to read certain books for school,
most of that material isn’t something they’d choose to read for
pleasure. He says they develop a sweat mentality to reading and
become “school-time readers, not life-time readers.” If kids
only experience it as drudgery, they’ll avoid it, but if they are
exposed to books to excite them, entertain them, or touch them
in some way, they’ll develop a love for books.
Ready to get started? Scholastic has a wonderful list of 100
best read aloud books which you can find here. Happy reading!
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