how does reading help education

Navigating Literacy Challenges, Fostering a Love of Reading

• Posted February 15, 2024
• By Jill Anderson
• Language and Literacy Development
• Learning Design and Instruction
• Teachers and Teaching

How do we teach children to love reading amidst the ongoing debates surrounding literacy curriculums and instructional methods, and the emphasis on student outcomes? It's something Senior Lecturer Pamela Mason thinks about a lot. She's been both a teacher and school leader, and has spent decades training teachers on literacy instruction. She says it takes many pieces coming together to create the perfect mix — especially making it fun — for successful reading instruction. 

As data continues to show dips in children's reading assessments nationwide, some states like Florida and Mississippi have been able to make progress and capture the attention of educators. 

"There's a whole systemic approach to literacy improvement. A lot of people looking at Mississippi say, 'Oh, it's because there's going to be third grade retention. Yes, that is part of their literacy plan, but there's so much more. There's in-school support. There's after school support. There's even books being given free to families who attend schools who are underperforming," she says. "So we have this merging of teachers, and community, and families, and administrators, all shining a light on the importance of literacy, and hopefully we're keeping some of the joy involved in that, as well."

JILL ANDERSON: I'm Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast.  Pamela Mason knows teaching reading takes more than just a great curriculum to make an impact. She's a Harvard expert on literacy pedagogy and has spent decades not just as a teacher and leader in the classroom, but also training reading coaches and specialists.

As more districts change literacy curriculums, she says we need to focus on supports and resources and sustaining those efforts for teachers. She knows many educators are under pressure in ways that student outcomes often override the process of learning to read. Mason says a big piece of learning to read is just making it fun. I wanted to know more about how the debates around literacy and changing curriculums impact teaching reading and how educators and families can teach children to love reading.

First, I asked her about the complexities in learning to read and teaching reading.

PAMELA MASON: Every child who starts school in kindergarten, or even in pre-K, they're very excited about learning how to read because they see people in their lives reading what looked to them like squiggles, and they're making sense of them. They are laughing about them, they're sharing them, and so there's a lot of motivation to figure out how to read. For most of our languages, there is a connection between what those squiggles are, we know them as letters, into sounds, and the letters work together to make words.

So there is this code that learners need to learn, and that is what we're seeing in terms of what we call phonics, matching sounds to symbols, symbols to sounds, and putting those symbols and sounds together to come up with words, come up with sentences, paragraphs, and whole stories.  So that's what's involved in learning how to read.

In terms of teaching how to read, then we need to have the teachers kind of back up and say, "All right. We're going to start with sounds and symbols and make those symbols into words." And that is what we see as the kind of phonics instruction in schools. While they're making symbols into sounds, and sounds into symbols, and learning how to read, learners need to be joyful about it. They want to have fun with words.

Even little kids, when they're just learning to talk, make up silly little rhymes because they're experimenting with language. And that same joy and feeling of experimentation should carry over, actually, into how we teach reading. I don't think any of us would continue learning how to do something if somebody kept telling us how hard it was, how important it was, how necessary it was. Yes, we know that a lot about things as adults that we do in life, but if there's no joy in it, why bother, or we're like half invested in it.

So having teachers think about how to give good instruction and engender this joy so that we have children who know how to read, enjoy reading, and so they want to read. And there's a lot of research around that cyclical positive reinforcement, of-- you do something, you get better at it, it feels good, you do it more. And we can think about that as adults, things that we've learned how to do as adults, and so what keeps us in the game. And success and joy keep us all in the game.

JILL ANDERSON: I imagine it has to be hard for literacy instructors, any kind of teacher, trying to teach kids how to read, just because it feels like there's so much pressure. It's easy for that joy, I would imagine, to just disappear.

PAMELA MASON: Yes, there has been a lot of pressure, especially coming out of the pandemic and thinking about the learning loss that may have happened. And whilst we have children for whom reading doesn't click, right, but in keeping at it, and providing them with extra support, we still need to hold out that this can be fun, this can be interesting. They may be interested in a hobby or a sport, and so bringing that in and showing how learning how to read will help them in that endeavor, or that people that they look up to are readers, so that we can always kind of keep that motivation going.

As Jeanne Chall said, "A good program in the hands of a great teacher is optimum," but we need to also get the learners thinking about their agency and their interest in reading. We see that also with children who come to us who are multilingual.

JILL ANDERSON: Right.

PAMELA MASON: They know a lot about language. They know of home language that they've learned to speak. They may have learned to read it. And then they come to our classrooms where most of the time English is the language of instruction, and so it looks a little different to them. But helping teachers see the assets that these learners bring, that they already know a language and it's just applying some of those skills to this new language, English, our language of instruction. And so I think it's important that we really think about all of those aspects of our learners and how we can help them decode the language and then understand it. That's the whole point of it.

PAMELA MASON: It's not just rattling off rhyming words, or word families, or all the words you can think of that begin with the letter B. It's around reading something that's interesting that you can understand and you want to understand.

JILL ANDERSON: We're seeing a lot of movement to change literacy curriculums around the country, and some states-- Florida, Mississippi, those have been highlighted as doing really, really well with reading. How important are literacy curriculums as a piece of this puzzle?

PAMELA MASON: The literacy curriculums are an important piece in that you want to have a good arc of learning.

JILL ANDERSON: Mm.

PAMELA MASON: You want to have good sound pedagogy as well as content. But the other thing that we see is when districts or schools decide that they need to adopt a literacy curriculum they're saying explicitly, or implicitly, there's a problem we need to solve.

PAMELA MASON: So what is that problem? And so there's some self-study that goes on. What are our learners doing well? What aren't they doing well? Is it the curriculum? Is it the teaching? And when they decide it's the curriculum, then they usually have a committee. And the International Literacy Association really describes this process where teachers and specialists come together and say, all right, what do our learners need? How do these curriculum address this need? And then when the curriculum gets adopted, usually from the publisher, you get an influx of support. They may bring consultants or specialists to do professional learning for grade levels or for whole schools, and then you have ongoing literacy coaching that help teachers get used to the new program, and implement it.

And as we see in Florida, with, "Just Read, Florida!" and in Mississippi, a lot of their progress in the National Assessment of Educational Progress has stemmed from this infusion of time, attention, and resources-- money and human resources, to help teachers do a better job. If the story of stone soup, you know-- you're adding all these different things, so you add all of these different variables which are all very important. And it's this infusion of attention, and support, and validation, and so, then you get the Mississippi miracle. You get a lot of success in Florida. You get success in Alabama. In our country, these are not states that one would look to as intellectual powerhouses, which is really unfair.

PAMELA MASON: But it is because of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. They haven't done well, but now they're doing much better, and everyone is kind of scratching their heads. Well, if you actually look at what they're doing, there's a whole systemic approach to literacy improvement. A lot of people looking at Mississippi say, oh it's because there's going to be third grade retention. Yes, that is part of their literacy plan, but there's so much more. There's in-school support. There's after school support. There's even books being given free to families who attend schools who are underperforming. 

So we have this merging of teachers, and community, and families, and administrators, all shining a light on the importance of literacy, and hopefully we're keeping some of the joy involved in that, as well. And so it's really hard to tease out-- if they did this without this, would they have the same results? And in terms of being an educator, and looking at learners, you don't want to say, "All right. You get this, and you get this, and we'll see who comes out on top." I mean, I understand that's part of research design, but in terms of having been a school leader you want all of your learners to have the very best from everybody. In terms of the teachers, and the families, and the learners, we're all in it together.

JILL ANDERSON: Because I do wonder if after some of those districts and states get propped up, if other districts in other states might say, "Oh hey, we should look at our curriculum and change it, too." But then maybe they don't put all that support in, all those additional resources, to not just get through the first year but to sustain it.

PAMELA MASON: Exactly. That's important, that it's sustainable. And though Mississippi had this great increase in the NAEP, in 2019, there was a slight drop in 2022, and so you wonder whether the shine has gone off the apple, you know, whether some of the resources may have been pulled out, because it's not an inexpensive endeavor. So one again has to wonder whether everybody's getting all of this attention and so we all rise to the occasion, and then the attention wanes, and we're thinking, "Oh well. You know, let's kind of ease back in." And perhaps we're not maintaining our enthusiasm in being at the top of our game.

JILL ANDERSON: Right. One of the things about literacy that has always fascinated me is the endless debate around it even though we seem to know what works. You're someone who supports-- teaches literacy specialists, literacy coaches, what do you think is getting lost in all of these endless debates we have?

PAMELA MASON: The basic debate is, do we teach code or phonics, or do we teach meaning? And we have to teach it all.

PAMELA MASON: In our language there is a code, and to hide that code and not open that code up to our learners, it's just not right, and it's not going to come out with good results. But once we help our learners with the code, you're giving them a key, --

PAMELA MASON: --but they have to have a door to open, and that's comprehension. And so how does knowing all these words, and how to say them, open up poetry, open up narrative, open up mysteries, open up fantasy, so that oh, this is why I'm learning that "B" says "buh", because I can talk about battles, and bullets, and all kinds of horizons and things that we can think of. So it's really important to have that comprehension. So there has to be the, this is the code, this is the meaning, and we need to work it together.

JILL ANDERSON: What do you hear from the teachers, and the specialists, and the coaches, who are coming to you taking professional development, or just coming for a degree? Are they just exhausted from all this debate?

PAMELA MASON: The ones that I work with are on some level exhausted but also eager to know what should I be doing? What does work? And we try to avoid the notion of best practices versus best practicing.

We're in it and we're always learning more about how people learn to read, and how people learn to read in multiple languages. And so education is a process. Being an educator is a process. And so we're always trying to do what's best with the knowledge that we have at this time.

So they're very anxious and willing to do better, and to find out new techniques, and how do they work, and when do they work, and really becoming observers of children and kid watchers. And sometimes that one technique will work for maybe 90% of your learners, and there's that 10% that just not clicking. And so what about those learners? What about your curriculum? What about the way you're delivering your curriculum? It's always about what you teach, and also how you teach it.

You may need to tweak it a little bit just to grab those other learners and get them feeling accomplished, and seeing their growth, and them seeing their own growth. That's also very important.

JILL ANDERSON: So I want to distinguish between these two ideas. One that you had kind of mentioned earlier about finding some joy. And it seems like there is teaching kids to read, and then there's teaching children to love reading. What's the difference, and how do you implement that while adhering to the science of reading?

PAMELA MASON: Well, we know how to teach children how to read.

PAMELA MASON: And then providing them with a reading menu, a reading diet, that's varied. That we have short pieces that they read, long pieces, silly pieces, pieces that tell them why the roots go down and the stems go up, which most children want to know. They're very interested in how their world works. Giving them that variety will help them be more joyous.

The other issue is text difficulty. There is a push, and rightly so, to have our learners at an appropriate level of difficulty, at their grade level, and supporting them to do more. But I'm sorry, I'm not going to cuddle up with a physics textbook at the end of a long day.

JILL ANDERSON: Yeah. [LAUGHING]

PAMELA MASON: And so even as a skilled reader, sometimes I just want to read something lighter. Sometimes we call them our summer beach books. I enjoy actually reading young adult fiction.

It keeps me in touch with what the young adults are reading, are interested in. They're very well written, and they're fun.

I need that variety in my reading diet, and our learners need that variety in their reading diet, so that they, again, maintain that joy. That it's not always this arduous task of, "What does the author mean? What is the deep meaning?" You know, sometimes you just want to have fun with your reading.

JILL ANDERSON: So just letting them choose whatever they want, even when it's always graphic novels.

PAMELA MASON: Yes, there's nothing wrong with graphic novels. There are adult graphic novels. Octavia Butler's work is now in a graphic novel form. And actually involving a lot more parts of your brain, because the words are fewer than if it were in a text, but you're seeing visual images, you're seeing expressions. So you know how the characters are feeling, rather than being told how they're feeling, and so it is a multiple literacy. So you're reading words, you're reading visuals, you're reading how the characters are situated on the page to each other.

So there's a lot of literacies going on with graphic novels, and I have to say that I'm still developing some of those literacies, because I'm a linear reader. I like reading text, and when I see all of those images, and the bubbles, I'm not sure do I go left to right, up to down. But again, some of our learners-- just like a fish to water. They're very comfortable with that, and it's interesting to hear them talk about how they navigate that presentation of text and multiliteracies.

JILL ANDERSON: Is there one thing that you would recommend reading teachers try to do?

PAMELA MASON: Find texts that their learners want to read.

JILL ANDERSON: Is that hard, though?

PAMELA MASON: Sometimes the children don't know what they like.

JILL ANDERSON: Yeah.

PAMELA MASON: And so experimenting, and giving learners permission not to finish a book. I mean, as an adult, have you finished every book you've started? I'll tell you, quite frankly, I haven't. You know, yes, you want to give it some time to reveal the storyline, to understand the setting, and the characters, and then sometimes you can say, "Yeah, no. No thanks." And there's no shame in that. This is not the genre, or the author, or the style, or the setting, or the time period in which this text is situated, and it's OK. 

If they're constantly only reading the first couple of pages and dropping it, then we need to be more--

PAMELA MASON: -- focused and really try to help the reader find something that they like, either around topic, around difficulty level, and then get them through it. I'm not trying to say that they should be grazing all the time, kind of at a literacy buffet, --

PAMELA MASON: -- but they do need to sit down and have a whole meal. But finding which type of literature, that type of reading, that type of text, is important.

JILL ANDERSON: Because I can imagine for some children, especially those who are just resistant to reading, it can be really hard to find that one type of book, or a genre, or something that they're even open to reading.

PAMELA MASON: Yes. And sometimes a book of short stories will be fine, or plays on books, so we have, "The Three Little Pigs," and then we have Jon Scieszka's story of the real-- this true story of the three little pigs where it's told from the wolf's perspective.

PAMELA MASON: And it's hysterical. It gives you an opportunity to talk about perspective-taking, and you know, do you believe the wolf, or was he really trying to cover up that he wanted to eat the pig? You can find different books that put a different spin on traditional stories or traditional points of view that may be engaging to some learners that are reluctant.

JILL ANDERSON: What about parents? We know that they play a huge role in their child's reading. As a parent you get in front of a teacher, maybe 10 minutes or 20 minutes a year, for a parent teacher conference. Is there anything that they should be asking their child's teacher about reading?

PAMELA MASON: They should ask the teacher what it is that the teacher is working on in terms of a comprehension skill. Are they working on sequencing? Are they working on knowing fact versus opinion? Are they working on character development? What is this character like? How are they changing throughout the story? And then when the parents, the families are talking with their child about what they're reading, be it for school or be it for leisure, then ask those same types of questions so that the child gets the hint that, oh what I'm learning in school, actually, I'm supposed to be applying any and every time I read. And that is important.

And it also helps open up the conversation between children and their families. What are you reading? Blah blah blah. Do you like it? Yes. End of conversation. [LAUGHING] Rather than, oh, what are you reading? Who's your favorite character? Why is that your favorite character? Would you want that character to be your friend, or not? Is that character a good person or someone that you would want to keep away from? So that kind of opens up the conversation around the storyline. 

I would encourage families not to kind of get out the flashcards, and, all right, all right, we're going to do reading today. And then, all right, these are the 20 words you need to know at the snap of a finger. We'll leave that at school, and hopefully not a lot of that is happening in school. But it should be again bringing in that joy. The other aspect of reading that I encourage families to do is to read.

JILL ANDERSON: Right, read together.

PAMELA MASON: We're always telling our children, it's important to read. When do they see you reading?

JILL ANDERSON: Right. [SURPRISED LAUGHING]

PAMELA MASON: When do they see you reading and laughing out loud? When do they see you reading and, you know-- oh my god, I don't believe they just did that! So it's again, you're talking the talk-- reading is important. But you need to walk the talk. You need to do it. And there have been times in my family where I just kind of go in the living room with a book, and sit down and-- don't bother me, I'm reading. Wait, wait, wait, wait a minute. Wait, wait, wait till I get to the end of this chapter, then-- then we can talk. As long as, you know, nothing-- there's no dire emergency in the family, it can wait. 

That's also important, that we don't kind of wait till the our children go to bed for us to read. And then--

JILL ANDERSON: Interesting.

PAMELA MASON: --we kind of look like, somewhat like, hypocrites. We're saying reading is important but they never see us read. Writing is important. When do they see you write?

JILL ANDERSON: Right

PAMELA MASON: It could be a book, it could be just the recipe. And talking out loud, "Oh, all right. I need to get these ingredients. All right, what needs to go first?" And that sequencing, those are all comprehension skills. And so talking out loud, thinking out loud about what you're reading, be it for pleasure, be it for information, be it procedural-- recipes are procedural. Test is in the outcome. "Maybe I didn't put this ingredient in." Or, "Maybe I should have left it in the oven. It said 10 minutes but maybe it needed 12 minutes, or 15 minutes."

And so again, that's all those decisions are based on text.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

JILL ANDERSON: OK. Well, thank you very much, Pamela.

PAMELA MASON: Well, thank you, Jill, for having me. It's been great talking about literacy with you.

JILL ANDERSON: Pamela Mason is a senior lecturer and director of the Jeanne Chall Reading Lab, at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she also teaches the workshop, "Culturally Responsive Literature Instruction." This is the Harvard EdCast, produced by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Thanks for listening.

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Why Reading Is Important for Children’s Brain Development

Early childhood is a critical period for brain development , which is important for boosting cognition and mental well-being. Good brain health at this age is directly linked to better mental heath, cognition, and educational attainment in adolescence and adulthood. It can also provide resilience in times of stress.

But, sadly, brain development can be hampered by poverty. Studies have shown that early childhood poverty is a risk factor for lower educational attainment. It is also associated with differences in brain structure, poorer cognition, behavioral problems, and mental health symptoms.

This shows just how important it is to give all children an equal chance in life. But until sufficient measures are taken to reduce inequality and improve outcomes, our new study, published in Psychological Medicine , shows one low-cost activity that may at least counteract some of the negative effects of poverty on the brain: reading for pleasure.

Wealth and brain health

Higher family income in childhood tends to be associated with higher scores on assessments of language, working memory, and the processing of social and emotional cues. Research has shown that the brain’s outer layer, called the cortex, has a larger surface area and is thicker in people with higher socioeconomic status than in poorer people.

Being wealthy has also been linked with having more grey matter (tissue in the outer layers of the brain) in the frontal and temporal regions (situated just behind the ears) of the brain. And we know that these areas support the development of cognitive skills.

The association between wealth and cognition is greatest in the most economically disadvantaged families . Among children from lower-income families, small differences in income are associated with relatively large differences in surface area. Among children from higher-income families, similar income increments are associated with smaller differences in surface area.

Importantly, the results from one study found that when mothers with low socioeconomic status were given monthly cash gifts, their children’s brain health improved . On average, they developed more changeable brains (plasticity) and better adaptation to their environment. They also found it easier to subsequently develop cognitive skills.

Our socioeconomic status will even influence our decision making . A report from the London School of Economics found that poverty seems to shift people’s focus toward meeting immediate needs and threats. They become more focused on the present with little space for future plans—and also tended to be more averse to taking risks.

It also showed that children from low-socioeconomic-background families seem to have poorer stress coping mechanisms and feel less self-confident.

But what are the reasons for these effects of poverty on the brain and academic achievement? Ultimately, more research is needed to fully understand why poverty affects the brain in this way. There are many contributing factors that will interact. These include poor nutrition and stress on the family caused by financial problems. A lack of safe spaces and good facilities to play and exercise in, as well as limited access to computers and other educational support systems, could also play a role.

Reading for pleasure

There has been much interest of late in leveling up. So what measures can we put in place to counteract the negative effects of poverty that could be applicable globally?

Our observational study shows a dramatic and positive link between a fun and simple activity—reading for pleasure in early childhood—and better cognition, mental health, and educational attainment in adolescence.

We analyzed the data from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) project, a U.S. national cohort study with more than 10,000 participants across different ethnicities and and varying socioeconomic status. The dataset contained measures of young adolescents ages nine to 13 and how many years they had spent reading for pleasure during their early childhood. It also included data on their cognitive health, mental health, and brain health.

About half of the group of adolescents started reading early in childhood, whereas the others, approximately half, had never read in early childhood, or had begun reading later on.

Meet the Greater Good Toolkit for Kids

28 practices, scientifically proven to nurture kindness, compassion, and generosity in young minds

We discovered that reading for pleasure in early childhood was linked with better scores on comprehensive cognition assessments and better educational attainment in young adolescence. It was also associated with fewer mental health problems and less time spent on electronic devices.

Our results showed that reading for pleasure in early childhood can be beneficial regardless of socioeconomic status. It may also be helpful regardless of the children’s initial intelligence level. That’s because the effect didn’t depend on how many years of education the children’s parents had had—which is our best measure for very young children’s intelligence (IQ is partially heritable).

We also discovered that children who read for pleasure had larger cortical surface areas in several brain regions that are significantly related to cognition and mental health (including the frontal areas). Importantly, this was the case regardless of socioeconomic status. The result therefore suggests that reading for pleasure in early childhood may be an effective intervention to counteract the negative effects of poverty on the brain.

While our current data was obtained from families across the United States, future analyses will include investigations with data from other countries—including developing countries, when comparable data become available.

So how could reading boost cognition exactly? It is already known that language learning, including through reading and discussing books, is a key factor in healthy brain development. It is also a critical building block for other forms of cognition, including executive functions (such as memory, planning, and self-control) and social intelligence.

Because there are many different reasons why poverty may negatively affect brain development, we need a comprehensive and holistic approach to improving outcomes. While reading for pleasure is unlikely, on its own, to fully address the challenging effects of poverty on the brain, it provides a simple method for improving children’s development and attainment.

Our findings also have important implications for parents, educators, and policymakers in facilitating reading for pleasure in young children. It could, for example, help counteract some of the negative effects on young children’s cognitive development of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .

About the Authors

Barbara jacquelyn sahakian.

Barbara Jacquelyn Sahakian, Ph.D. , is a professor of clinical neuropsychology at the University of Cambridge.

Christelle Langley

Christelle Langley, Ph.D. , is a postdoctoral research associate in cognitive neuroscience at the University of Cambridge.

Jianfeng Feng

Jianfeng Feng, Ph.D. , is a professor of science and technology for brain-inspired intelligence/computer science at Fudan University.

Yun-Jun Sun

Yun-Jun Sun, Ph.D. , is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Science and Technology for Brain-Inspired Intelligence at Fudan University.

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Reading Revolution: The Science of Reading in Education

The Science of Reading has significant implications for education, as it provides evidence-based guidance for teaching reading skills to students of all ages. By applying the research findings from this field, educators can design effective reading instruction that helps all students develop strong reading skills and reach their full potential.

Looking for a way to improve reading skills in your classroom? Dive into the exciting world of the Science of Reading! Discover the latest and most effective techniques that will enhance your students' comprehension, vocabulary, and overall reading experience. With these strategies, you'll be able to create engaging and empowering lessons that will take your students to new heights of achievement.

What is the Science of Reading?

The Science of Reading refers to the body of research that explores how we learn to read, why some people struggle with reading, and how we can effectively teach reading skills. This field draws on various disciplines, including psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience, to uncover the cognitive and neurological processes involved in reading.

The Science of Reading has its roots in decades of research on the cognitive and neurological processes involved in reading. This research has helped to identify the critical skills and strategies that readers need to become proficient, including phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension.

While the principles of the Science of Reading have been well-established for many years, it has taken time for them to gain widespread recognition in the world of education. In recent years, however, there has been a growing movement to apply evidence-based practices from the Science of Reading to reading instruction in schools.

In the United States, the Science of Reading has gained significant attention and momentum in recent years, particularly in response to persistent gaps in reading achievement among students. In 2019, the National Council on Teacher Quality released a report on teacher preparation programs that found many programs weren’t adequately preparing teachers to teach reading based on the Science of Reading. 1 This report helped to spur a national conversation about the need for evidence-based reading instruction.

In response, several states have taken action to promote the Science of Reading in education. In 2019, the state of Mississippi passed the Literacy-Based Promotion Act, which requires all K-3 teachers to receive training in evidence-based reading instruction, including the Science of Reading. Other states, including Florida and Arkansas, have also passed laws mandating evidence-based reading practices in schools.

The Science of Reading has also gained recognition and influence in other parts of the world. In the United Kingdom, the Education Endowment Foundation has funded a number of studies on the effectiveness of evidence-based reading interventions. In Australia, the New South Wales Department of Education has developed a comprehensive literacy strategy based on the Science of Reading.

The Science of Reading represents a significant shift in the way educators approach reading instruction. By incorporating evidence-based practices from this field, educators can help ensure that all students have the opportunity to become proficient readers.

Five key findings of the Science of Reading

The Science of Reading provides strong evidence-based guidance for teaching reading skills. Research has identified critical reading skills, including phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. Studies have also shown that explicit and systematic instruction in these skills is more effective than implicit or incidental instruction.

Additionally, the Science of Reading emphasizes the importance of early intervention for students who struggle with reading, as well as ongoing assessments and progress monitoring to ensure that all students are making progress.

Phonemic awareness

The ability to identify and manipulate individual sounds in words is a critical precursor to reading. Children who struggle with phonemic awareness may have difficulty sounding out words and comprehending text.

Teaching the relationship between letters and their corresponding sounds (phonics) is a crucial component of reading instruction. A strong understanding of phonics helps children decode unfamiliar words and develop reading fluency.

A robust vocabulary is essential for reading comprehension. Children who are exposed to a rich and diverse range of words from an early age are more likely to become strong readers.

The ability to read quickly and accurately is a hallmark of skilled reading. Fluency is developed through regular reading practice and explicit instruction in reading skills.

Comprehension

The ultimate goal of reading is to understand and learn from the text. Skilled readers use a variety of strategies to comprehend what they read, including making connections between new information and prior knowledge, asking questions, and visualizing.

Shaping the future of learning with SoR

The Science of Reading is shaping the future of education by incorporating evidence-based practices, identifying at-risk students, and designing curriculum materials based on research-based principles. Advocates are working to ensure educators have access to the latest research findings and instructional practices.

Here are some of the ways the Science of Reading is shaping education:

Reading instruction based on evidence

The Science of Reading emphasizes the importance of teaching phonics, phonemic awareness, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension explicitly and systematically. Educators can use evidence-based instructional practices to help students develop these critical reading skills.

Teacher training and professional development

Many educators have not received comprehensive training in the Science of Reading. To address this gap, teacher training programs and professional development opportunities are beginning to incorporate evidence-based practices from the Science of Reading.

Assessment and intervention

The Science of Reading helps educators identify students who may be at risk for reading difficulties and provide targeted interventions to support their reading development.

Curriculum development

Educators can use the research-based principles of the Science of Reading to inform the design and selection of curriculum materials that support the development of strong reading skills.

Policy and advocacy

The Science of Reading has prompted discussions and debates about education policies related to reading instruction and assessment. Advocates for evidence-based reading instruction are working to ensure educators have access to the latest research findings and instructional practices.

Understanding reading fluency: The frameworks of SoR

The skills and processes that underlie fluent reading are complex and multifaceted and require a thorough understanding to effectively develop and teach.

Two main frameworks commonly used to understand reading fluency are The Simple View of Reading and Scarborough's Rope. 2

The Simple view of reading

The Simple View of Reading is a model that describes reading comprehension as the product of two main components: word recognition (decoding) and language comprehension. This framework emphasizes the importance of developing decoding and language comprehension skills to achieve reading fluency.

Scarborough’s Rope

Scarborough's Rope is another framework that provides a detailed view of the multiple skills and processes required for fluent reading. The framework presents reading as a multifaceted "rope," with individual strands representing various reading sub-skills, including phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. Each strand is interwoven with the others, and all are necessary for strong reading ability.

Together, these frameworks provide a structured and comprehensive approach to analyzing and developing the necessary skills for reading proficiency. By understanding the various components of reading fluency and how they relate to one another, educators can effectively develop targeted interventions and instruction to support students' reading development.

The seven principles of the Science of Reading

The Science of Reading is a body of research that has identified critical principles for effective reading instruction. These principles are based on decades of research into how children learn to read. These principles are also proven to be effective in promoting reading proficiency among students of all backgrounds. Here are seven key principles that every educator should know:

• Reading is not a natural skill and must be explicitly taught.
• Phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension are foundational skills that must be taught systematically and explicitly.
• Direct, explicit instruction is more effective than implicit or incidental instruction.
• Effective instruction must be evidence-based and guided by ongoing assessment and progress monitoring.
• High-quality reading instruction is essential for all students, especially those who are struggling.
• Engaging instruction that includes multiple modes and senses is more effective than passive instruction.
• Early intervention is critical for students who are struggling with reading. 2

By understanding and implementing these principles, educators can help ensure that all students have the opportunity to develop strong reading skills and become confident, capable readers.

Support bi-literate and bilingual students with Science of Reading

Research-based instruction can be a powerful tool in supporting bi-literate and bilingual students, who comprise a significant portion of English learners in public schools across the United States. Over 75% of English learners in public schools are Spanish-speaking (NCES, 2021). 3 Celebrating the existing skills and strengths of these students through research-based instruction helps them develop new skills that support their continued growth.

Effective instruction for bi-literate and bilingual students should also align with the principles of the Science of Reading, which emphasizes evidence-based instruction and the explicit teaching of foundational skills like phonics and vocabulary. Integrating these principles into instruction for bi-literate and bilingual students can help them build strong literacy skills in both languages and become confident, capable readers in all areas.

Research has shown that explicit instruction in phonemic awareness and phonics is particularly important for bi-literate and bilingual students who are learning to read in two languages. This type of instruction can help students develop a strong foundation in both languages and support their ongoing growth as readers.

Similarly, instruction in vocabulary and comprehension strategies can help bi-literate and bilingual students develop strong reading skills in both languages. By focusing on evidence-based instruction that aligns with the Science of Reading, educators can help ensure that all students, including bi-literate and bilingual learners, have access to the tools and strategies they need to become successful readers.

Ultimately, the Science of Reading provides a strong foundation for effective reading instruction in schools and helps ensure that all students, including bi-literate, bilingual students, and native language speakers have the opportunity to become proficient readers.

A deep understanding of their strengths and needs, as well as an ongoing commitment to evidence-based instruction, promotes their continued growth and development and super-charges your impact as an educator.

Learn the latest SoR education skills at KU

Looking to take your career in education to the next level? The Curriculum and Teaching online Master's program at KU is the perfect opportunity to do just that. With a focus on the latest essential skills in the field—including the Science of Reading—our program equips you with the knowledge and expertise needed to make a meaningful impact in today's ever-evolving educational landscape.

With the flexibility of online learning, you can gain these skills while maintaining your busy schedule. Join our community of passionate educators and take the first step towards advancing your career today.

According to U.S. News and World Report, KU offers the #19 Best Online Master's in Education Programs for Curriculum and Instruction. 4

Our admissions advisors are here to answer your questions, Contact us today.

• Retrieved on April 14, 2023, from www.nctq.org/publications/A-Fair-Chance
• Retrieved on April 14, 2023, from scienceofreading.amplify.com/
• Retrieved on April 14, 2023, from www.nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cgf/english-learners
• Retrieved on April 14, 2023, from usnews.com/education/online-education/university-of-kansas-155317

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Why Read? The importance of instilling a love of reading early.

Definitionally, literacy is the ability to “read, write, spell, listen, and speak.”

Carol Anne St. George, EdD, an associate professor and literacy expert at the University of Rochester’s Warner School of Education, wants kids to fall in love with reading .

“It helps grow their vocabulary and their understanding about the world,” she says. “The closeness of snuggling up with a favorite book leads to an increase in self-confidence and imagination, and helps children gain a wealth of knowledge from the books you share. And it only takes 15 minutes a day of reading together to nurture this growth.”

Reading is necessary for learning, so instilling a love of reading at an early age is the key that unlocks the door to lifelong learning. Reading aloud presents books as sources of pleasant, entertaining, and exciting formative experiences for children to remember. Children who value books are more motivated to read on their own and will likely continue to hold that value for the rest of their lives.

Instilling a love of reading early gives a child a head start on expanding their vocabulary and building independence and self-confidence. It helps children learn to make sense not only of the world around them but also people, building social-emotional skills and of course, imagination.

“Reading exposes us to other styles, other voices, other forms, and other genres of writing. Importantly, it exposes us to writing that’s better than our own and helps us to improve,” says author and writing teacher, Roz Morris. “Reading—the good and the bad—inspires you.”

Not only that, but reading is a critical foundation for developing logic and problem-solving skills. Cognitive development is “the construction of thought processes, including remembering, problem solving, and decision-making, from childhood through adolescence to adulthood” (HealthofChildren.com).

Why Focus on Summer?

Summer vacation makes up about one-quarter of the calendar year. This is a time when students face different opportunities based on the social and economic status of their families. An analysis of summer learning (Cooper, Nye, et al., 1996) found that “all students lost mathematics and reading knowledge over the summer…This evidence also indicated that losses were larger for low-income students, particularly in reading.” Summer reading has emerged as a key component of state legislation aimed at promoting student literacy.

The Horizons at Warner program is committed to maintaining and improving student literacy with our kids every summer they return. Nationwide, each affiliate of Horizons National administers reading assessments to students during the first and last weeks of program. Pre-assessment allows our teachers to customize the learning experience on a student-need basis, and post-assessment reinforces this by not only revealing student progress in each area, but by giving insight into how we can improve program design in the future.

Research demonstrates that if a child is not reading at grade level by third grade, their ability to meet future academic success and graduate on time is diminished. Teachers know that up to third grade children are learning to read. After third grade, students are reading to learn. According to St. George, it is impossible to be successful in science, social studies, and even mathematics without a strong foundation in reading and literacy.

On average, we see an improvement by 1 to 3 reading levels in our students here at Horizons at Warner. Keeping true to our mission, these levels will account for all and more of the percentage of summer learning loss that we know our students would face without this kind of academic intervention, and leave our students five to six months ahead of where they would have been without Horizons.

Reading TO children

According to Jim Trelease, author of the best-seller, The Read-Aloud Handbook: “Every time we read to a child, we’re sending a ‘pleasure’ message to the child’s brain… You could even call it a commercial, conditioning the child to associate books and print with pleasure” (ReadAloud.org)

Developing a connection between “pleasure” and reading is crucial. Learning is the minimum requirement for success in every field of life.

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As an educator and a parent, one crucial practice I desire in my students and children is that reading becomes as pervasive and uncontrollable a habit as nail biting or tapping their pen during a lecture. I want students and children to read for the same reason George Leigh Mallory climbed Everest: Because it is there.

The many benefits of reading for pleasure

The American Library Association has also found a strong connection between daily independent reading habits and overall student performance. The ALA cites findings from a number of studies:

• Students who read independently become better readers, score higher on achievement tests in all subject areas, and have greater content knowledge than those who do not
• The more elementary-aged students read outside of school, the higher they scored on reading achievement tests
• Multiple studies support that even a small amount of independent reading increases primary and elementary students’ reading comprehension, vocabulary growth, spelling facility, understanding of grammar, and knowledge of the world

One key factor in the positive influence of this reading seems to be that it is voluntary — students seek out books and participate of their own volition.

Early exposure to reading appears to pay off in that it creates an expectation in children that reading is an essential part of their daily lives, thus the families of pre-readers in preschool, kindergarten, and early elementary must be encouraged to expose them to reading through story time at the library or reading as daily habit in the home.

As students grow up, it appears that some level of independence should be encouraged as it supports their commitment to reading and that later elementary and middle-school students should be spurred to choose their own books within a challenging framework.

The bad news: Americans are reading less

A 2007 study from the National Endowment for the Arts showed that American students are reading less. Over the course of 10 years — 1992 to 2002 — adults showed an overall decline in reading for fun of about seven percent and students showed a similar decline, approximately five percent.

Theories on the reason for the decline abound, but the biggest lies in the idea of displacement. It is thought that American reading times are being sacrificed for television or other hobbies. This drop in reading for pleasure has serious side effects, namely a trickle-down influence on students. Teachers have attempted to rectify the problem by assigning reading homework, only to meet frustration when students are noncompliant.

How educators can support independent reading

As an educator, I am aware of student resistance to homework and hope that rather than an assignment , my students will pick up the habit of daily doses of reading. Research supports the strong positive correlative effect of 20-60 minutes of daily reading.

Subsequent research has found that the best amount may vary; low-level readers benefit from 15-20 minutes whereas high level readers get the greatest benefit from reading 45 minutes or more. Regardless of the best individual amount, research consistently shows that time dedicated to independent reading pays off.

Because teachers have a significant influence on their students’ habits and performance, one solution is to set high expectations of them as readers. I begin each Monday morning by asking my students what they have read over the weekend, which is often rewarded with insightful discussions of newspaper articles and books; I am never afraid to suggest new reading to them. Modeling consistent independent reading for my students, and expecting the same from them, is a key means of influencing their behavior.

My son’s teacher has the same expectations of her class, though she goes a step further and asks them to keep a record of their reading as a method of reflecting upon and rewarding the effort they have put into their daily habits. My daughter’s teacher has his students blog about the reading they’ve done and gives them tangible rewards, marking their progress on the ceiling with paper books.

The rewards encourage competition between classmates and the blog entries pique the interest of other students, who then read the same book and generate discussions with their fellow readers.  Regardless of how it is accomplished, the general theme is the same:  We collectively expect our students to read and, as students often do, they rise to the expectation.

Monica Fuglei is a graduate of the University of Nebraska in Omaha and a current adjunct faculty member of Arapahoe Community College in Colorado, where she teaches composition and creative writing.

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Five ways that reading with children helps their education

Research Associate, Psychology of Education, Coventry University

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Emma Vardy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Coventry University provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

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For book lovers, reading to their children may seem obvious. Why would they not want to pass on their love of literature? However, researchers have shown there are more benefits for both adult and child that come with reading than just building a bond – particularly when it comes to education.

A lot of research has been done into the effects of children engaging with literacy related activities at home. Much of this focuses on the early years, and how the literacy environment helps to develop emergent literacy skills. Shared book reading early on stimulates language and reading development , for example.

But the home literacy environment doesn’t stop being important once children have learnt to read. The opportunities that a child has to read at the home, and parental beliefs and behaviours, continue to impact on children’s reading throughout the school years. Here are just five ways that reading with your child can help their general education.

1. It opens up new worlds

Reading together as a family can instil a love of books from an early age. By taking the time to turn the pages together, adults can help children see that reading is something to enjoy and not a chore. Some schoolchildren read because they like it but others do it because they will be rewarded – with stickers in a school reading diary for example. Those children who read because they enjoy it read more books, and read more widely too. So giving your child a love of books helps expand their horizons.

2. It can build confidence

Children judge their own ability to read from observing their classroom peers, and from conversations with parents and teachers. When sharing a book, and giving positive feedback, parents can help children develop what is known as self-efficacy – a perceived ability to complete the specific activity at hand. Self-efficacy has been shown to be important for word reading . Children who think they cannot read will be less inclined to try, but by using targeted praise while reading together, parents can help children develop belief in their own skills.

3. It can build positive reading attitudes

Studies have shown that the more opportunities a child has to engage with literacy based activities at home, the more positive their reading attitudes tend to be. Children are more likely to read in their leisure time if there is another member of the family that reads, creating a reading community the child feels they belong to. Parental beliefs and actions are related to children’s own motivations to read, though of course it is likely that this relationship is bidirectional –- parents are more likely to suggest reading activities if they know that their child has enjoyed them in the past.

4. It expands their language

When reading a book together, children are exposed to a wide range of language. In the early stages of literacy development this is extremely important. Good language development is the foundation to literacy development after all, and increased language exposure is one of the fundamental benefits of shared book reading.

Shared book reading early on can have a long-term benefit by increasing vocabulary skills. And if they encounter a word they don’t understand, they have a grown up on hand to explain it to them in a way that makes sense to them. When children are taught to read while sharing a book, it can improve alphabet knowledge, decoding skills, spelling, and other book-related knowledge (such as how to actually read a book). Doing something as simple as sounding out the letters of a word they do not understand can vastly improve a child’s skills.

5. It can help their speech and language awareness

Formal shared reading can also involve the use of intonation, rhythm and pauses to model what is known as prosody. This is not a skill that is directly taught, but by simply pausing when needed or changing the tone of your voice can help children develop fluency when reading aloud. This is one of the reasons that shared book reading is not just for pre-schoolers. Demonstrating what is involved in reading complex text aloud fluently is very valuable for children of all ages.

You don’t need a lot of money, or even hours of spare time to read with children. Even small efforts can have big benefits. Nor does it have to be just at bedtime. Sharing a book, a magazine or a comic can take place any time of the day.

The most important thing to remember is to have fun. Interest in reading emerges from enjoying it with a parent. If you’re interested and make an effort, it can have a huge impact on a child’s engagement with reading.

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Why Every Educator Needs to Understand the Science of Reading

Teachers of all kinds, from elementary reading specialists to high school science teachers, rely on their students’ literacy abilities to effectively deliver instruction. However, not all teachers receive the same literacy education training—and it’s not all equal. At the forefront of the current literacy conversation is the science of reading, a gold-standard body of research that provides educators with foundational knowledge about how students best learn to read. Understanding the science of reading is key for educators to provide the best possible literacy support to their students.

Nationally recognized author and authority on literacy education, Dr. Louisa Moats, has written widely about the professional learning teachers require, the importance of brain science, and the relationships among language, reading, and spelling.

Q: In your opinion, why do so many students fail to become proficient in reading?

Dr. Moats: Many factors contribute to the “achievement gap” in reading—insufficient early childhood language development, insufficient familiarity with books and print, differences in “wiring” or the brain’s capacity to analyze speech, and so forth. The solution to reading problems, no matter what their origin, is instruction by a well-informed teacher who knows how to help kids overcome those disadvantages.

Q: For decades, you have been a spokesperson for reading research and what we understand about how children learn to read. Can you define the science of reading?

Dr. Moats: The body of work referred to as the “science of reading” is not an ideology, a philosophy, a political agenda, a one-size-fits-all approach, a program of instruction, nor a specific component of instruction. It is the emerging consensus from many related disciplines, based on literally thousands of studies, supported by hundreds of millions of research dollars, conducted across the world in many languages. These studies have revealed a great deal about how we learn to read, what goes wrong when students don’t learn, and what kind of instruction is most likely to work the best for the most students.

Q: Is there evidence that the science of reading can make a difference in reducing reading problems? 

Dr. Moats: Yes, those findings about effective instruction are what’s driving our commitment to try to change the status quo. Whole states, as with Mississippi on the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), can make significant gains. But we have a series of studies showing that by the end of first grade, the rate of serious reading problems can be reduced to about 5% or less.

Q: There has been much discussion about the science of reading. For example, Emily Hanford of American Public Media has brought new attention to the concept. Do you feel educators are becoming more familiar with the science of reading and are applying this into their teaching?

Dr. Moats: These days, I have moments when I feel more optimistic. Emily Hanford’s reports have been the catalyst sparking our current national discussion. A growing number of states are confronting what is wrong with the way many children are being taught to read. I’m inspired by the dialogue and courage of the people who know enough about the science of reading to offer a vigorous critique of those practices, programs, and approaches that just don’t work for many children. I am also optimistic about the recent report out from the National Council on Teacher Quality. There’s an increasing trend of new teachers being trained in the components of reading, and I think that many veteran educators are open to deepening their learning.

However, there’s still a long way to go. In general, our teaching practice lags far behind what the research tells us. We consolidated the research on what it takes to teach children to read way back in the early 1990s, and yet today a majority of teachers still haven’t been given the knowledge or instruction to effectively teach children to read.

Q: Some states, like Mississippi and Ohio, are improving student literacy rates across the entire state. To what do you attribute this noticeable rate of improvement in those states?

Dr. Moats: Change in those states and others is a consequence of many converging factors, including unambiguous and consistent leadership from the state level; statewide delivery of professional development (mainly with Lexia® LETRS®) to most teachers; in-class coaching to help teachers apply their professional learning; standards and incentives for both students and teachers, as is manifest on required tests; and support for changes in how teachers are licensed in the first place.

Q: Could you tell us a bit about LETRS and how it supports educators?

Dr. Moats: LETRS (Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling) empowers teachers to understand the what, why, and how of scientifically based reading instruction. We focus on teaching essential components including phoneme awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension that should be taught during reading and spelling lessons to obtain the best results for all students. Teaching reading is a complex undertaking because, ideally, all aspects of language are explicitly addressed within a curriculum that is rich and meaningful. Not only do teachers need to understand how kids are learning to read, but also, they must adopt instructional routines, activities, and approaches that can be used to differentiate instruction.

After going through the LETRS training, educators generally have a better sense of what they should be looking for in a reading curriculum and are much more critical consumers. For example, in one state we had a strong group of teachers who learned a tremendous amount about early reading through LETRS. When the state pushed to adopt a particular program, these educators could immediately identify the program’s significant design weaknesses based on what they had learned from LETRS.

Q: What should school and district leaders consider when evaluating programs that support what is known about the science of reading?

Dr. Moats: Here are a few important things for leaders to consider when evaluating programs. First, ideally, there should be explicit instruction in foundational skills for approximately 45 minutes daily that follows a lesson routine: review, explain the concept, provide guided practice, provide more (independent) practice, spell and write to dictation, read decodable text. Then, determine if the instruction in phoneme awareness, phonics, and text reading is informed by knowledge of both the speech-sound system and the orthographic system. Third, examine the scope and sequence for order and pacing of concept introduction. Intervention materials should be aligned with [Tier I] classroom instructional materials but provide more intensive practice. Avoid any program that includes drawing shapes around words, making alphabetic word walls, teaching the “cueing systems” approach (appealing to context to guess at unknown words), or that does not follow a clear scope and sequence where one skill is built upon another.

Q: What advice would you give to district or school leaders who want to change how reading is being taught in their classrooms?

Dr. Moats: Invest in teacher education before investing in specific programs. Any program will be more powerful if knowledgeable, confident teachers are using it. In fact, we have evidence that if teachers do not understand either the content or the rationale for explicit teaching, they are unlikely to get results even if the program they have been given is well designed. The program is only a tool; teachers must know how to use it. It’s a wonderful thing when we understand what we’re doing, why, and for whom we’re doing it.

The science of reading offers educators a deep understanding into how students learn to read. Effective professional learning can help teachers deepen their understanding of literacy instruction and improve student outcomes. Learn more about LETRS and Lexia® Aspire™, a new professional learning program for teachers of older students, to see how the science of reading can accelerate your students’ knowledge acquisition.

Learn more about the ways LETRS prepares educators with the science of how reading and language work together to build strong literacy skills. Visit  lexialearning.com/LETRS . 

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The Importance of Reading to Your Children

It’s undeniable that a child’s reading skills are important to their success in school, work, and life in general. And it is very possible to help ensure your child’s success by reading to them starting at a very early age. Continue reading to learn more about the top benefits of reading to children and how reading can support them for the future.

7 Benefits of Reading to Children

Whether you’re reading a classic novel or fairy tales before bed, reading aloud to children can significantly benefit your child’s life. Some benefits reading to children include:

Supported cognitive development

Improved language skills.

• Preparation for academic success

Developing a special bond with your child

Increased concentration and discipline, improved imagination and creativity, cultivating a lifelong love of reading.

Reading to young children is proven to improve cognitive skills and help along the process of cognitive development. Cognitive development is the emergence of the ability to think and understand; it’s “the construction of thought processes, including remembering, problem solving, and decision-making, from childhood through adolescence to adulthood” ( HealthofChildren.com ). It refers to how a person perceives and thinks about his or her world through areas such as information processing, intelligence, reasoning, language development, attention span, and memory.

When you begin reading aloud to your child, it essentially provides them with background knowledge on their young world, which helps them make sense of what they see, hear, and read.  According to the IRA/NAEYC position statement (1998)  “It is the talk that surrounds the reading that gives it power, helping children to bridge what is in the story and their own lives,” rather than just the vocalization of the words. Introducing reading into your young child’s life, and the conversations that it will prompt, helps them to make sense of their own lives, especially at a young age.

This study of early brain development explains “In the first few years of life, more than 1 million new neural connections are formed every second.” Consider this citation from a study on toddlers’ cognitive development as a result of being read aloud to: “A child care provider reads to a toddler. And in a matter of seconds, thousands of cells in these children’s growing brains respond. Some brain cells are ‘turned on,’ triggered by this particular experience. Many existing connections among brain cells are strengthened. At the same time, new brain cells are formed, adding a bit more definition and complexity to the intricate circuitry that will remain largely in place for the rest of these children’s lives.”

Therefore, the more adults read aloud to their children, the larger their vocabularies will grow and the more they will know and understand about the world and their place in it, assisting their cognitive development and perception.

Reading daily to young children, starting in infancy, can help with language acquisition, communication skills, social skills, and literacy skills. This is because reading to your children in the earliest months stimulates the part of the brain that allows them to understand the meaning of language and helps build key language, literacy and social skills.

In fact, a recent brain scan study found that “reading at home with children from an early age was strongly correlated with brain activation in areas connected with visual imagery and understanding the meaning of language” ( TIME.com )

These cognitive skills and critical thinking skills are especially important when you consider that, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics , more than one in three American children start kindergarten without the skills they need to learn to read. About two-thirds of children can’t read proficiently by the end of the third grade.

Furthermore, while a child will be able to latch onto vocabulary and language he or she hears around him or her, introducing reading into their auditory learning provides another benefit: it introduces the language of books, which differs from language heard in daily life. Whether it’s a children’s book or classic novel, book language is more descriptive, and tends to use more formal grammatical structures.

Prepare for academic success

Early reading with your child is a true one-on-one opportunity for children to communicate with their parents and parents to communicate with their children. It allows children to grow their vocabulary skills with exposure to new words and listening skills they develop from hearing someone read to them that become vital to their academic success.

Studies have shown that “the more words that are in a child’s language world, the more words they will learn, and the stronger their language skills are when they reach kindergarten, the more prepared they are to be able to read, and the better they read, the more likely they will graduate from high school” ( PBS.org ).

Numerous studies have shown that students who are exposed to reading before preschool are more likely to do well when they reach their period of formal education. According to a study completed by the University of Michigan , there are five early reading skills that are essential for development. They are:

• Phonemic awareness – Being able to hear, identify, and play with individual sounds in spoken words.
• Phonics – Being able to connect the letters of written language with the sounds of spoken language.
• Vocabulary – The words kids need to know to communicate effectively.
• Reading comprehension – Being able to understand and get meaning from what has been read.
• Fluency (oral reading) – Being able to read text accurately and quickly.

While children will encounter these literacy skills and language development once they reach elementary school and beyond, you can help jumpstart their reading success by reading to them during infancy and their early toddler years.

While they won’t be able to practice fluency or phonics at that stage, they will get an earlier introduction to phonetic awareness, vocabulary and reading comprehension, all of which will set them up for success as they grow and interact with the world around them.

It goes without saying that reading to your young child on a regular basis can help you forge a stronger relationship with them. When it comes to children, one of the most important things you can do to positively influence their development is spend time with them. Reading to your children provides a great opportunity to set up a regular, shared event where you can look forward to spending time together. With shared reading, your child will trust and expect that you will be there for them. The importance of trust to small children cannot be overstated.

Reading a favorite book to your children not only helps you bond with them, but also gives your children a sense of intimacy and well-being. This feeling of intimacy helps your child feel close to you, and the feelings of love and attention encourage positive growth and development.

With babies specifically, although they may not be able to understand what you’re saying when you read to them, reading aloud provides a level of invaluable nurturing and reassurance. Very young babies love to hear familiar voices, and reading is the perfect outlet to create this connection.

At a broader, more scientific level, it’s the parent-child relationship, nurturing relationships between caregivers and children that set a positive life course. If you are able to read aloud with your child at a predictable, scheduled time that fits with the daily routines of home and school, you’ll be able to provide something constant that they can expect and likely even look forward to.

Reading aloud together and having a shared activity gives you and your child something to talk about, which in turn supports the development of reading and writing skills (per the vocabulary and reading comprehension areas of development mentioned above). And down the road, reading together can be used to discuss real-life experiences and issues. A children’s book can provide springboards to meaningful discussions about many different topics which can further develop a child’s critical thinking skills.

At its core, literature is one of the best ways to help kids understand something without necessarily having to experience it for themselves. Reading to your child helps to expose them to all types of subjects and concepts, building our children’s understanding of humanity and the world around them ( ReadBrightly.com ).

Introducing regular reading time into your child’s schedule has another benefit outside of creating shared time together: increased discipline and concentration. Very young children rarely sit still for long, and it’s oftentimes difficult to get them to focus. But when you introduce regular reading to your children, you may start to observe a change in behavior. Toddlers may initially squirm and become distracted during story time, but eventually they’ll learn to stay put for the duration of the book.

According to EarlyMoments.com , along with reading comprehension comes “a stronger self-discipline, longer attention span, and better memory retention, all of which will serve your child well when she enters school.”

Young children naturally have a capacity to dream big and use their imaginations. Reading aloud to your child helps them use their imaginations to explore people, places, times, and events beyond their own experiences. Reading as an imaginative activity can open doors to all kinds of new worlds for your child. By widening your child’s imagination, your child is more likely to dream bigger and act creatively which can benefit they school, work, and life in the future.

According to Jim Trelease, author of the best-seller, The Read-Aloud Handbook : “Every time we read to a child, we’re sending a ‘pleasure’ message to the child’s brain… You could even call it a commercial, conditioning the child to associate books and print with pleasure” ( ReadAloud.org )

This connection between reading and “pleasure” is crucial for success later in life. As personal development coach and speaker Brian Tracy says, your ability to expand your mind and strive for lifelong learning is critical to your success — “Learning is the minimum requirement for success in any field.”

Reading is the key for lifelong learning, and if you can instill a love of reading at an early age, then a commitment to lifelong learning is sure to follow. Reading aloud presents books as sources of pleasant, valuable, and exciting experiences. Children who value books are motivated to read on their own, and will likely continue to practice independent reading throughout the rest of their lives.

When it comes to reading to your children, the benefits to your child’s life range far beyond the development of a close bond with them, although that’s certainly one of them. Reading aloud to children is truly the single-most important activity for building these understanding and skills essential for reading success that your child will carry with them all throughout their life.

To learn more about our resources for children, visit our website .

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Beyond Cognition: Reading Motivation and Reading Comprehension

The authors review research on children’s reading motivation and its relation to their reading comprehension. They begin by discussing work on the development of school motivation in general and reading motivation in particular, reviewing work showing that many children’s reading motivation declines over the school years. Girls tend to have more positive motivation for reading than do boys, and there are ethnic differences in children’s reading motivation. Over the last 15 years researchers have identified in both laboratory and classroom-based research instructional practices that positively impact students’ reading motivation and ultimately their reading comprehension. There is a strong need for researchers to build on this work and develop and study in different age groups of children effective classroom-based reading motivation instructional programs for a variety of narrative and informational materials.

In their Child Development Perspectives article on learning to read, Hulme and Snowling ( 1 ) stated"learning to read is a key objective of early education and difficulties in learning to read can have serious adverse consequences” (p. 1). They focused on cognitive explanations for early reading development. Here we build on their insightful paper by discussing reading motivation and its relation to children’s reading comprehension skills across the school years. Proficient reading comprehension is crucial for success in every academic domain, and particularly in courses focused on reading and literature ( 2 ). As students advance in their education, they are expected to read and write across a wide variety of disciplines with increasing skill, flexibility, and insight ( 3 ). Because reading materials become increasingly demanding in later childhood and adolescence, readers must be fluent in the processes of word decoding and recognition, continually expand their vocabularies and knowledge base, and learn to use elaborate cognitive strategies to make inferences and critically analyze text ( 4 ). Hulme and Snowling ( 1 ) discuss that the fluency of these skills is dependent upon development of earlier foundational reading abilities such as phoneme awareness and letter knowledge in early childhood, two essential components of reading words and sentences. Because of the hierarchical nature of reading skill development, slow growth along any of these dimensions can result in significant difficulty and negative consequences for students’ reading comprehension and achievement more generally as they progress through school ( 1 ). To master the skills and strategies just described children must commit time and effort to learn them; thus students must be motivated to learn and then utilize them fully.

Unfortunately, national statistics demonstrate that many children struggle with reading early in their education and continue to struggle throughout their school years. In 2015, the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) found that 64% of fourth-grade, and 66% of eighth-grade, students were at or below proficiency (defined by NAEP as “solid academic performance”) for reading performance ( 5 ). Further, 31% of fourth-grade, and 24% of eighth-grade, students were at or below basic level, which means that they have only partially mastered the prerequisite knowledge and skills needed for successful academic performance. These statistics are very troubling, particularly because reading below grade level in third grade is among the strongest predictors of later school drop out ( 6 ).

Reading performance and other achievement outcomes are even bleaker for students of color; the achievement gap between European American and African American students has only slightly narrowed since the inception of NAEP in 1992 ( 5 ). Students of color who have fallen behind grade level reading comprehension are especially susceptible to drop out of school ( 7 ). Paired with findings indicating that students of color are disproportionately affected by poverty, unemployment, and inadequate educational opportunities ( 8 ), the vulnerability of students of color for low reading comprehension and its negative outcomes is particularly troubling. Poor reading comprehension is thus an integrated component of the structural inequalities that serve as barriers to fruitful careers and higher education.

As efforts focused primarily on skill building and strategy instruction have continually failed to improve national student performance and narrow academic achievement gaps, some researchers have begun to focus on how children’s motivation to read relates to reading comprehension. We discuss this work in this article, beginning with how we and others define reading motivation. We then discuss how reading motivation develops, and relates to different achievement outcomes. We focus next on gender and ethnic differences in reading motivation and comprehension, followed by discussion of instructional programs designed to enhance children’s reading motivation and comprehension. We close with suggestions for future research.

Defining Reading Motivation

Prominent theoretical models of achievement motivation focus on children’s beliefs, values, and goals as the primary “drivers” of their motivation (see 9 , 10 ). Central motivational beliefs include competence-related beliefs such as self-efficacy, or one’s confidence in one’s ability to accomplish different tasks ( 11 ), and the sense of control and autonomy individuals have over their learning ( 12 ). When students believe they are efficacious at a given activity such as reading they do better, even when controlling for previous performance ( 11 ). Researchers also have discussed different ways in which individuals value activities, including how important they are to the individual, how useful they might be, and whether or not they are interested in the activity ( 13 ). Students’ valuing of activities such as reading are particularly important influences on their choice to do them. Researchers distinguish between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for different activities, with intrinsic motivation arising from the individual’s own self-expressed interests and extrinsic motivation based on outside influences such as rewards and grades. Ryan and Deci ( 12 ) reviewed much work showing that intrinsic motivation relates to longer-term engagement in achievement activities. Individuals have different kinds of goals and goal orientations for the achievement activities in which they engage, such as the goal of increasing one’s knowledge (mastery goal orientation), or the goal of outperforming others (performance goal orientation) ( 14 ). These goal orientations relate in systematic ways to different achievement outcomes ( 15 ) and it is important to note that many students hold both of them. Finally, although motivation often is considered an individual variable or characteristic, social context and social relations impact students’ motivation as well, particularly during the early adolescent years ( 2 ).

Development of Reading Motivation

Wigfield et al. ( 10 ) review extant work on the development of children’s achievement motivation. In brief, many young children tend to have a strong sense of their competence for the different activities they do in school. Children also initially find most school activities to be interesting and exciting, resulting in enthusiasm and valuing of academic activities. Unfortunately, for many children this optimistic beginning does not last. Researchers have found children’s competence beliefs, intrinsic motivation, and valuing of academic subjects decrease across the school years ( 16 ). Researchers focusing on the development of reading motivation in particular generally have found decreases over age in reading attitudes and motivation (see 17 , for review). For instance, McKenna, Kear, and Ellsworth’s ( 18 ) work on children’s attitudes toward reading shows that across the elementary school years, children report liking reading less each year. The 2015 NAEP report supports these findings and indicates that many children in middle school become actively resistant to engaging in reading ( 5 ). Guthrie, Klauda, and Morrison ( 8 ) found that middle school students overwhelmingly describe the information texts they read in science classes as boring, irrelevant, and difficult to understand—hardly a recipe for positive motivation to read this material.

These changes in students’ competence beliefs, values, and intrinsic motivation have been explained in two main ways: Intrapersonal change and environmental change. Through the school years, children’s capacity to understand their own performance increases (see 10 ). They receive more and more feedback about their performance in school, and become more sophisticated at understanding its meaning. Evaluative information such as report cards and feedback about performance on academic projects and tests can lead some children to realize that they are not as capable as their peers; also potentially resulting in a decrease in intrinsic motivation to learn.

A second (and related) explanation focuses on how certain evaluation practices contribute to the decline in some children’s motivation. Researchers and policy makers have discussed a variety of such practices (see 19 for detailed review). These practices include the following. Due to an increase in educational accountability at different levels, school administrators require teachers to implement more formal and frequent evaluations of their students. Practices that emphasize social comparison and encourage excessive competition among children (e.g., class ranking, spelling bees) may lead them to focus on how their skills compare to others. Such practices can deflate children’s competence beliefs, particularly those of children doing less well (see 20 ).

Certain instructional practices can undermine children’s intrinsic motivation for learning as well. Instruction that makes few attempts to spark children’s interest and, as mentioned earlier, utilizes unappealing texts can decrease intrinsic motivation. If teachers overly restrict student choice of reading topics or materials, they risk stifling intrinsic motivation and autonomy ( 12 ). Finally, Assor, Kaplan, and Roth ( 21 ) found that when students do not see the relevance of what they are learning to their own values and goals, they are less engaged in learning.

Relations of Reading Motivation to Different Reading Outcomes

But why should we be concerned about these declines? One major reason is that reading motivation is strongly associated with reading outcomes, such as students’ reading comprehension, use of effective strategies, and course grades ( 22 ). In this section we discuss how the motivational belief, value, and goal variables defined above relate to children’s reading outcomes.

Students’ competence beliefs and self-efficacy

Research has revealed that students reporting higher levels of self-efficacy and perceived competence obtained higher reading comprehension scores than students reporting lower levels of perceived competence, even when previous performance is controlled ( 11 ). Furthermore, students with high self-efficacy see difficult reading tasks as challenging and work towards mastering them, utilizing cognitive strategies productively in the process ( 11 ). High self-efficacy has also been found to improve performance on standardized reading tests in middle school students ( 23 ).

Perceived autonomy

The relationship between perceived autonomy and reading achievement has been well documented, particularly in elementary school students ( 24 ). Elementary school students’ perceived autonomy in the form of being allowed to select books to read and valuing book selection predicted their growth in reading comprehension across four months ( 24 ). Children who valued choosing their own books subsequently developed elaborate strategies for selecting books and reported being more intrinsically motivated readers.

Students’ valuing of reading

As noted earlier students’ valuing of reading and other subjects predict their choice of activities ( 13 ). Durik, Vida, and Eccles ( 25 ) found that children’s valuing of reading in fourth grade predicted their leisure time reading activities in 10th grade, and 10th grade students who valued reading read for career aspirations. Children’s valuing of reading also correlates with their reading achievement and engagement in school reading tasks at the primary and secondary school levels ( 26 ).

Students’ intrinsic and extrinsic reading motivation

Student’s intrinsic motivation correlates positively with their reading achievement and predicts their reading achievement over time ( 27 , 28 ). By contrast, Meece and Miller ( 29 ) found that students’ extrinsic motivation related to the use of surface strategies for reading and the desire to complete a task for a grade rather than to understand the task. These findings suggest that although extrinsic motivation is positively associated with reading grades it is less likely to positively influence reading comprehension ( 28 ).

Students’ goal orientations

Students with mastery goals make more metacognitive comments, paraphrase text more often, and make more connecting inferences than students who have a performance goal orientation ( 28 ); however, mastery goals often do not relate to indicators of performance like grades. By contrast, students’ performance goals do relate to their reading grades ( 28 ).

Social motivation

Children who like to participate in a group of learners by completing needed tasks are likely intrinsically motivated readers and subsequently have more positive reading outcomes ( 30 ). Social motivation also leads to increased amounts of reading, more effort, and higher levels of achievement in reading ( 31 ).

In summary, students’ reading motivation correlates with their reading comprehension in important ways. Do these results apply to different kinds of students? We turn to that topic next.

Gender and Ethnic Differences in Reading Motivation and Comprehension

There are important group-level differences in the patterns just discussed; we focus on gender and ethnic differences in children’s reading motivation and comprehension because they have been researched the most to date.

Gender differences

Researchers have found that throughout elementary and secondary school, females outperform males on various measures of reading achievement both in the U. S. ( 32 ) and in the PISA international comparison studies ( 33 ). Girls also report higher reading motivation than do boys ( 27 , 34 ). Interestingly, Jacobs et al. ( 16 ) found that male and female students had similar competence beliefs in reading in the first two years of elementary school but both the male students’ competence beliefs and value of reading subsequently declined more rapidly than did females. These findings may reflect cultural expectations that females will be more positive about reading than males ( 35 ), and suggest that research needs to focus on improving male students’ competence beliefs and value of reading alongside current efforts to foster female students’ involvement in the sciences.

Ethnic differences

Although the research on this issue is more limited than that on gender differences, researchers have found that African American students report higher self-efficacy, intrinsic motivation, and valuing of reading than do their European American peers ( 27 , 36 ), despite often performing more poorly on the reading outcomes measures.. In addition, the relation of children’s reading motivation to their performance varies across ethnic groups ( 27 , 28 , 37 ). Unrau and Schlackman ( 37 ) found that intrinsic motivation related more positively to reading achievement for Asian American students than for Latino students. Baker and Wigfield ( 27 ) found that European American students’ reading motivation related more strongly to their reading achievement than that of African American students, and Wang and Guthrie ( 28 ) found intrinsic motivation to relate positively, and extrinsic motivation to relate negatively, to text comprehension at similar levels for both American and Chinese students. These variations suggest the significance of ethnicity in shaping students’ reading motivation and the extent to which it affects academic performance, and thus should be explored further.

Instructional Programs to Enhance Reading Comprehension

Given that many students’ reading motivation declines and their reading motivation relates to their comprehension, it is crucial to work with teachers and other educators to enhance students’ reading motivation. Researchers now have identified a set of instructional practices that can foster students’ reading motivation and engagement, focusing on the motivation constructs discussed earlier in this article (see 38 for review). These practices include facilitating students’ success to build their self-efficacy, helping them to see the importance and relevance of what they are learning, giving them some autonomy over their learning, and allowing many social interactions around reading.

Researchers examining the effectiveness of these practices in laboratory studies that have focused on one of these practices have shown that they impact positively students’ reading motivation and comprehension ( 22 , 38 ). We know of only one large scale classroom-based instruction program that has examined how a focus on reading motivation in classroom instructional practices impacts students’ reading motivation and comprehension: Concept Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI). CORI was developed by Guthrie, Wigfield, and their colleagues ( 39 , 40 ), and the instructional practices in CORI focus on enhancing children’s reading motivation and comprehension within a content domain—usually science or social studies. In CORI teachers provide reading strategy instruction and also implement teaching practices that focus on enhancing the motivation variables just described: Students’ self-efficacy, autonomy, value of reading, intrinsic motivation, and collaboration in reading. For instance, to enhance students’ perceived autonomy in reading students are given many choices regarding what they read. To enhance their self-efficacy teachers ensure students at all reading levels experience success with the materials they are reading.

At both the elementary and middle school levels, students who experienced CORI had higher reading motivation, greater engagement in reading, and higher reading comprehension for different reading activities than did students in strategy-instruction only conditions (in which they were taught a variety of successful reading strategies as documented in the National Reading Panel Report or traditional school instructional programs ( 41 ). These effects have been documented in studies using both quasi-experimental and switching replication designs ( 42 , 43 ).

In explaining CORI’s effectiveness, Guthrie, Wigfield, Barbosa, et al. ( 42 ) discussed how its motivation and strategy instruction practices likely interacted to influence student motivation and comprehension in positive ways. As students’ motivation increases they likely use the reading strategies more, which further improves their comprehension. Interestingly, CORI students’ reading strategy use (measured behaviorally) was higher than that of students in the strategy instruction condition, further showing the potential power of motivation in changing students’ cognitive approach to reading. Continuing to explore the complex relations and interactions of students’ motivation and cognitions as they engage in reading is a priority for future research.

Summary and Conclusions

For many years the reading field was dominated by a focus on the cognitive processes and strategies involved in learning to read ( 41 ). As important as this work was and is to our understanding of the development of reading comprehension it did not include http://www.wmata.com/index.cfm? http://www.wmata.com/index.cfm? enough attention to children’s motivation for reading. Teachers with extensive knowledge of the most effective reading strategies with which to instruct their children will only be successful to the extent that their students are motivated to learn and use those strategies.

Over the last 20 years we have learned much about the nature of children’s reading motivation and how it relates to both the amount and types of reading children do, and their reading comprehension. We also have learned much about effective instructional practices that lead to improvements in elementary and middle school children’s reading motivation. Yet much research remains to be done with respect to understanding the development of children’s reading motivation and what kinds of interventions can improve it. With respect to understanding reading motivation most of the work to date has involved self-report measures. Such measures provide essential information about how children view their motivation, but they have many limitations, especially when used with young children. Teacher ratings of student motivation and engagement are one alternative; they are reliable and relate to different outcomes ( 19 ). However, researchers should explore observational and other types of measures of motivation, in reading and other areas.

Regarding interventions, CORI remains the only broad scale classroom based instructional program that systematically incorporates teaching practices focused on motivation. Its effectiveness needs to be assessed in larger, randomized control trial studies. Also, it would be informative to examine whether a core subset of the motivation practices (whichever those might be) would be as effective as the entire set. Yeager and Walton ( 44 ) reviewed the research on brief, social psychological motivation interventions that focus on students’ thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about school. Such interventions have been remarkably effective in improving students’ motivation and achievement in different areas. They should be assessed in reading as well. Finally, researchers studying the success of different intervention programs show that their effects are moderated by different child characteristics, including their gender, ethnicity, and achievement level ( 45 ). Such effects should be examined in future reading motivation intervention studies.

How Does Reading Help a Child's Development?

Good parents want the best for their children. They want their children to accomplish more, to make it a little further, to be absolutely happy in their lives. They spoon mushed peas into little mouths, supervise hours of painstaking homework, chauffeur to endless activities, and provide all the support they can, all in an attempt to ensure their kids have bright futures. And for this, we tip our hats to parents everywhere, including our own.

With all of the effort that parents put into supporting their children, it would be a shame to forget one of the simplest, but most rewarding ways, you can help your child's development—reading! Reading to children from a young age sets them up for future educational success, helps in the development of a strong parent-child relationship, aids physical and mental health, and helps children foster a positive attitude towards reading.

Future Educational Success

In my junior and senior year of high school, with college admissions at the forefront of my mind, my parents and I started visiting different college campuses. On one of these trips, we found ourselves sitting in a Harvard admissions meeting before a campus tour. At the end, when they opened it up for questions, one dad raised his hand and asked, “As a parent, what can I do to help my child get into Harvard?” The admissions officer responding confidently and emphatically, “Read to them.”

We can’t all go to Harvard, but the Harvard admissions committee clearly recognized a pattern in successful students–being read to. It might be too late to start reading to your senior to get them into Harvard, but starting a little sooner than that can have a lasting impact. With all the expenses of college and college admissions, this early investment will pay dividends.

“If every child were read to daily from infancy, it would revolutionize education in this country!”[9] This statement, made by former Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley, captures the link between early reading and future educational success succinctly and powerfully. Within the first three years, a child’s brain grows to 90% of it’s adult weight and they develop most of their capacity for learning. These years are a crucial and formative time for a child and his brain and through reading, singing to and even just talking to their children, parents are able to effectively “turn on” many of these brain cells.[10]

While it makes perfect sense that reading to your child from an early age would correlate to their being better readers (something we’d all love for our children!), there’s plenty of research that shows that reading to babies and toddlers actually positively impacts all facets of their formal education.[11] Studies have shown that being read to as a newborn not only improved the child’s vocabulary later on, but also their math skills. Children need to “hear” lots of words, whether through reading, or just being spoken to. While sometimes educational television programs can help us with this, it may surprise you to know that “the vocabulary of the average children’s book is greater than that found on prime-time television.”[12] “One study found that babies whose parents spoke to them a lot scored higher on standard tests when they reached age 3 than children whose parents weren’t as verbal. “[13]

While many of the studies referenced discuss reading to very young children, it’s never too late to start reading to your kids and to see them reap the benefits. I attribute much of my SAT vocabulary prowess to reading I did between the ages of 7 and 15. Even as adults, as we begin to read consistently we expand our vocabularies and improve our understanding of the world.

Stronger Parent-Child Relationship

This benefit starts from the very beginning. According to Reach Out and Read’s Medical Director Mary Ann Abrams, MD, “Reading a book to your newborn is a one-on-one activity that you can really turn into a special time with your baby. It exposes the baby to the sound of your voice, which is soothing for him.”[1]

Even after children are too “cool” to be snuggled, a study performed by YouGov aimed at looking for predictors that children would read frequently found that “children in the survey frequently cited reading aloud as a special bonding time with their parents”[2]. If you take a minute to think about it, it seems intuitive. Taking that time to put away devices, sit close, focus on the same story, and enjoy one anothers’ company creates precious memories that both parents and children can draw on later.

Physical and Mental Health

“Many pediatricians now believe that a child who has never held a book or listened to a story is not a fully healthy child.”[3] We all know that reading just one story won’t make a night and day difference either. In fact, just last summer, American Academy of Pediatrics issued a new policy, “recommending that all parents read to their children from birth.”[4] It’s this idea that emotional, mental and physical health are all linked, which we can certainly relate to as adults. When I exercise, I cope better emotionally and think more clearly. When I stretch my brain, I am more motivated in my physical health. It’s a beneficial, rather than a vicious, cycle.

By reading and being exposed to a variety of stories, children gain essential communication skills and see appropriate reactions to experiences exhibited in the interactions book characters have. They will be able to better identify how to express themselves and relate to others appropriately.[5] In the words of C.S. Lewis:

“Since it is so likely that children will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage.”

Give them the exposure to these knights and heroes. Give them people to emulate. It’s a win-win-win.

Positive Attitude Towards Reading

If you love books and treat reading as an indulgence rather than a chore, you subconsciously pass that same perception of reading on to your children. In fact, “some experts believe that parental emphasis on reading as entertainment, rather than as a skill, develops a more positive attitude toward reading in children.”[6] This makes perfect sense. If they’ve learned from you that reading is fun, they’ll be more likely to persevere, even when the going gets tough.[7]

This can be best communicated from very early on, but if your children are a little older, don’t give up, it’s never too late. By continuing to read aloud to your children, even after they can read by themselves, you can explore together books that are above their reading level, facilitating their access to the next level and increased learning. It’s motivating to them.[8]

Invest in their Future

Reading to children not only opens up a magical world of imagination and a new method of self-entertainment, it also empowers them for future success academically, emotionally and socially. Parents want the best for their children, and reading is just one more way you can choose to enable your children to reach their full potential, opening up doors no other activity can.

• DiProperzio, Linda. “The Benefits of Reading to your Newborn,”http://www.parents.com/baby/development/intellectual/benefits-of-reading-to-your-newborn/#page=1
• Rich, Motoko,”Study Finds Reading to Children of All Ages Grooms Them to Read More on Their Own, ” Jan 8 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/08/us/study-finds-reading-to-children-of-all-ages-grooms-them-to-read-more-on-their-own.html?_r=1
• “Start Early, Finish Strong: How to Help Every Child Become a Reader”, July 1999,https://www2.ed.gov/pubs/startearly/ch_1.html
• “10 Reasons Why You Should Read To Your Kids,” Early Moments, https://www.earlymoments.com/promoting-literacy-and-a-love-of-reading/why-reading-to-children-is-important/
• Bernice Cullinan and Brod Bagert, “Reading Aloud: Reading With You Child”. Reading Is Fundamental. http://www.rif.org/us/literacy-resources/articles/reading-with-your-child.htm

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Why writing by hand beats typing for thinking and learning

Jonathan Lambert

If you're like many digitally savvy Americans, it has likely been a while since you've spent much time writing by hand.

The laborious process of tracing out our thoughts, letter by letter, on the page is becoming a relic of the past in our screen-dominated world, where text messages and thumb-typed grocery lists have replaced handwritten letters and sticky notes. Electronic keyboards offer obvious efficiency benefits that have undoubtedly boosted our productivity — imagine having to write all your emails longhand.

To keep up, many schools are introducing computers as early as preschool, meaning some kids may learn the basics of typing before writing by hand.

But giving up this slower, more tactile way of expressing ourselves may come at a significant cost, according to a growing body of research that's uncovering the surprising cognitive benefits of taking pen to paper, or even stylus to iPad — for both children and adults.

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In kids, studies show that tracing out ABCs, as opposed to typing them, leads to better and longer-lasting recognition and understanding of letters. Writing by hand also improves memory and recall of words, laying down the foundations of literacy and learning. In adults, taking notes by hand during a lecture, instead of typing, can lead to better conceptual understanding of material.

"There's actually some very important things going on during the embodied experience of writing by hand," says Ramesh Balasubramaniam , a neuroscientist at the University of California, Merced. "It has important cognitive benefits."

While those benefits have long been recognized by some (for instance, many authors, including Jennifer Egan and Neil Gaiman , draft their stories by hand to stoke creativity), scientists have only recently started investigating why writing by hand has these effects.

A slew of recent brain imaging research suggests handwriting's power stems from the relative complexity of the process and how it forces different brain systems to work together to reproduce the shapes of letters in our heads onto the page.

Your brain on handwriting

Both handwriting and typing involve moving our hands and fingers to create words on a page. But handwriting, it turns out, requires a lot more fine-tuned coordination between the motor and visual systems. This seems to more deeply engage the brain in ways that support learning.

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Feeling artsy here's how making art helps your brain.

"Handwriting is probably among the most complex motor skills that the brain is capable of," says Marieke Longcamp , a cognitive neuroscientist at Aix-Marseille Université.

Gripping a pen nimbly enough to write is a complicated task, as it requires your brain to continuously monitor the pressure that each finger exerts on the pen. Then, your motor system has to delicately modify that pressure to re-create each letter of the words in your head on the page.

"Your fingers have to each do something different to produce a recognizable letter," says Sophia Vinci-Booher , an educational neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University. Adding to the complexity, your visual system must continuously process that letter as it's formed. With each stroke, your brain compares the unfolding script with mental models of the letters and words, making adjustments to fingers in real time to create the letters' shapes, says Vinci-Booher.

That's not true for typing.

To type "tap" your fingers don't have to trace out the form of the letters — they just make three relatively simple and uniform movements. In comparison, it takes a lot more brainpower, as well as cross-talk between brain areas, to write than type.

Recent brain imaging studies bolster this idea. A study published in January found that when students write by hand, brain areas involved in motor and visual information processing " sync up " with areas crucial to memory formation, firing at frequencies associated with learning.

"We don't see that [synchronized activity] in typewriting at all," says Audrey van der Meer , a psychologist and study co-author at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She suggests that writing by hand is a neurobiologically richer process and that this richness may confer some cognitive benefits.

Other experts agree. "There seems to be something fundamental about engaging your body to produce these shapes," says Robert Wiley , a cognitive psychologist at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. "It lets you make associations between your body and what you're seeing and hearing," he says, which might give the mind more footholds for accessing a given concept or idea.

Those extra footholds are especially important for learning in kids, but they may give adults a leg up too. Wiley and others worry that ditching handwriting for typing could have serious consequences for how we all learn and think.

What might be lost as handwriting wanes

The clearest consequence of screens and keyboards replacing pen and paper might be on kids' ability to learn the building blocks of literacy — letters.

"Letter recognition in early childhood is actually one of the best predictors of later reading and math attainment," says Vinci-Booher. Her work suggests the process of learning to write letters by hand is crucial for learning to read them.

"When kids write letters, they're just messy," she says. As kids practice writing "A," each iteration is different, and that variability helps solidify their conceptual understanding of the letter.

Research suggests kids learn to recognize letters better when seeing variable handwritten examples, compared with uniform typed examples.

This helps develop areas of the brain used during reading in older children and adults, Vinci-Booher found.

"This could be one of the ways that early experiences actually translate to long-term life outcomes," she says. "These visually demanding, fine motor actions bake in neural communication patterns that are really important for learning later on."

Ditching handwriting instruction could mean that those skills don't get developed as well, which could impair kids' ability to learn down the road.

"If young children are not receiving any handwriting training, which is very good brain stimulation, then their brains simply won't reach their full potential," says van der Meer. "It's scary to think of the potential consequences."

Many states are trying to avoid these risks by mandating cursive instruction. This year, California started requiring elementary school students to learn cursive , and similar bills are moving through state legislatures in several states, including Indiana, Kentucky, South Carolina and Wisconsin. (So far, evidence suggests that it's the writing by hand that matters, not whether it's print or cursive.)

Slowing down and processing information

For adults, one of the main benefits of writing by hand is that it simply forces us to slow down.

During a meeting or lecture, it's possible to type what you're hearing verbatim. But often, "you're not actually processing that information — you're just typing in the blind," says van der Meer. "If you take notes by hand, you can't write everything down," she says.

The relative slowness of the medium forces you to process the information, writing key words or phrases and using drawing or arrows to work through ideas, she says. "You make the information your own," she says, which helps it stick in the brain.

Such connections and integration are still possible when typing, but they need to be made more intentionally. And sometimes, efficiency wins out. "When you're writing a long essay, it's obviously much more practical to use a keyboard," says van der Meer.

Still, given our long history of using our hands to mark meaning in the world, some scientists worry about the more diffuse consequences of offloading our thinking to computers.

"We're foisting a lot of our knowledge, extending our cognition, to other devices, so it's only natural that we've started using these other agents to do our writing for us," says Balasubramaniam.

It's possible that this might free up our minds to do other kinds of hard thinking, he says. Or we might be sacrificing a fundamental process that's crucial for the kinds of immersive cognitive experiences that enable us to learn and think at our full potential.

Balasubramaniam stresses, however, that we don't have to ditch digital tools to harness the power of handwriting. So far, research suggests that scribbling with a stylus on a screen activates the same brain pathways as etching ink on paper. It's the movement that counts, he says, not its final form.

Jonathan Lambert is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance journalist who covers science, health and policy.

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K-12 Education

These California schools connect kids to community services. Will they survive budget cuts?

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Gov. Gavin Newsom launched the community school initiative with $4.1 billion in grants to connect students and their families to medical care, counseling and other services.

Budget cuts may be looming for many California programs, but one multi-billion-dollar initiative has so far evaded the ax: an ambitious push to bring medical and dental care, counseling, parenting classes, cultural activities and other services to public schools. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom has so far spared what’s known as the community school initiative, which pairs schools with local nonprofits and other government agencies to provide services to students and their parents. The goal is to transform schools into social service hubs with strong ties to families and the community – an approach that research shows can boost student attendance, reduce suspensions and raise test scores.

Newsom launched the initiative in 2020 with a series of grants totalling $4.1 billion for schools to roll out community school programs over 10 years. About half the money has been spent already, with the most recent grants awarded last week. 

Now, amid a steep revenue shortfall in California, the Legislative Analyst’s Office has recommended cutting $1 billion from the remaining funding. Some community school advocates fear the state may slash funding even for schools that are midway through the rollout process. The Legislature has until June 15 to make a decision. 

“It is a huge amount of money, but cutting it now would be devastating,” said Anna Maier, a senior researcher and policy advisor at the Learning Policy Institute, an independent think tank that’s researched community schools extensively. “This is an audacious and complicated initiative, and it’s just getting started. We need to keep the momentum going.” 

The community school grant money, which so far has gone to more than 1,000 schools, primarily pays for staff: coordinators, tutors, social workers, after-school staff and others. Over time, the programs are intended to be less reliant on state funds as the outside organizations cover more of the costs and schools start billing Medi-Cal for health services.

Nothing new about social services in schools

The idea of schools providing more than just academics has been around for at least a century, as schools during the Industrial Revolution provided meals, clothing and other necessities for students living in poverty. In 1973, the Black Panthers started what’s thought to be a forerunner of modern community schools by opening a school in Oakland that served meals and offered curriculum focused on Black history and culture and other programs tailored to local families.   

Informally, many schools in middle-class and affluent areas have been community schools for decades. They’ve built strong relationships with local organizations and businesses, encouraged family involvement and offered a slew of activities suited to their students’ needs. In those neighborhoods, the schools’ success is at least partially due to family support and involvement.

The current push for community schools was spurred in part by a 2017 report from the Learning Policy Institute that found in general, schools that integrate social services “help children succeed academically and prepare for full and productive lives.” Low-income students, students of color, students with disabilities and English learners especially benefited from schools with extra services, parent involvement and strong links to outside organizations.

Pandemic upended community school rollout

But so far, evidence of community schools’ effectiveness in California is uneven — in part because the Covid-19 pandemic upended the education system just as community school programs were getting underway. Oakland Unified, for example, has one of the state’s largest and most comprehensive community school programs, but also has some of the most lackluster outcomes. The suspension rate – 4% last year – has barely changed since 2018 and remains above the state average. The graduation rate actually inched downward last year, to 75%. 

Diane Dixon , a Republican assembly member from Newport Beach who sits on the Assembly Appropriations Committee, said she supports community schools generally but is dismayed that test scores for students , especially Black and Latino students, have fallen over the past five years, despite the community school investment. While the pandemic played a role in that decline, she expects better results by now.

“California should have the finest schools in the country, if not the world,” Dixon said. “As legislators, we need to make sure all our children are getting a high quality education, and right now, I don’t know how well we’re doing that.”

Another challenge is accountability. Schools that receive community school grants must report their progress to the state every year and post the reports on their web sites. Nearly all reported their results to the state, but it’s unclear how many schools actually posted those reports publicly. An informal look at a half-dozen districts that received grants showed that none had posted their reports, at least not in an obvious place.

“Community schools give us a chance to address historic inequities. It’s long overdue, but the education system is getting a new mindset, a whole new approach.” Asher Ki, director of educational renewal and innovation at Californians for Justice

Schools with poor results are supposed to get assistance from the state, and those who fail to improve risk losing their grants. But the assistance program is still getting underway, and participation is not mandatory.

“Community schools are a great idea, but we need to know what’s working, what’s impactful,” said Kimi Kean, director of Families in Action for Quality Education, which advocates for family involvement in Oakland schools. “This is such a significant investment, we can’t overlook the importance of accountability.”

Angelica Jongco, deputy managing attorney for Public Advocates, one of a dozen organizations that promotes community school policy in California, said the accountability — and results — will improve with time. Schools have only been getting grant money for two years, which is far too soon to expect results.

“Attendance, test scores, suspension rates — these things do not change automatically,” Jongco said. “That’s all the more reason we need to maintain this investment. Especially in times of challenges and uncertainty, we need to be investing in what works.”

‘A whole new approach’

Some schools have shown dramatic progress since winning community school grants. Anaheim High School, for example, since 2016-17 has seen its graduation rate jump 15 percentage points and the number of students meeting California college admission requirements jump almost 40 percentage points, according to state data .

“The community school money has provided services to students who otherwise would not have them. Simple as that.”  Pamela Moy, oakland high school principal

And hidden within otherwise mediocre data, some schools point to individual success stories. Eureka City Schools, for example, had a high rate of chronic absenteeism last year, but over a 60-day period one homeless student went from 40 absences to just one and another student went from 26 to one. Oakland Unified has seen improvements in the number of students completing the classes required for college admission, as well as a ten-fold increase in the number of students enrolled in college while still in high school.

For Asher Ki, attending a community school would have made all the difference in his education. As a high school student in Fresno in the early 2010s, Ki said he felt “alone and unsupported.” Part of the reason was that his family, who is African American, did not feel welcome and were not engaged. 

“For them, school wasn’t a place you wanted to be. It wasn’t where you’d go for a meaningful education,” Ki said. “So they couldn’t help me, because they didn’t know where to go, who to talk to…. Any chance at pushing the status quo was met with racism and dehumanization.”

That experience is what drove Ki to advocate for community schools. Ki is now director of educational renewal and innovation at Californians for Justice, a social justice advocacy group that’s one of a dozen nonprofits that jointly promote community school policy in California. If he had attended a community school, he said, those years would have been much different: He and his family would have had more of a stake in his education. 

“Community schools give us a chance to address historic inequities,” Ki said. “It’s long overdue, but the education system is getting a new mindset, a whole new approach.”

Museum visits, health care and more at Oakland High

Oakland High School, a 1,500-student school in Oakland Unified where nearly all students are low-income, receives $360,000 a year in community school state grant money. Among other things, the money pays for museum tickets, yoga classes, college visits, tours of tech companies and other activities for Black girls in a club called Sisterhood. 

When Oakland high received its grant, Black girls had the school’s highest suspension rate. The club was a way to help Black girls build friendships, connect to role models and learn about opportunities beyond high school, said principal Pamela Moy.

On a recent Friday meeting of Sisterhood, a few dozen girls shared lunch, chatted about their summer plans and reflected on their year with the club leaders, African American women they referred to as “aunties.” Overall, more than 100 girls have participated in club activities.

Senior Habakkuk Johnson said the club has given girls a place to relax and connect.

“If people come from bad environments, they can come here and be around good people. It helps people do better,” Johnson said. “It helps people change.”

Princess Momoh, a junior, said the club helped her “find Black girls I can relate to. It gave me a chance to talk to more people and make more friends.”

Since the pandemic, the suspension rate among Black girls at Oakland High has dropped from 13.5% to 9.6% – still high, but a bigger decline than other groups experienced. School counselor Faith Onwusa said she is certain the club is a primary reason for the improvement.

“When I was in school we had nothing like this,” Onwusa said. “It’s just super necessary.”

Community school money also goes toward the school’s wellness center, which offers everything from first aid to mental health counseling to assistance for recent immigrants and their families. The center has more than 40 employees from a variety of agencies, and sees a constant stream of students. Spacious, brightly decorated and always stocked with snacks, the center is an inviting place for students as well as staff. Some students just go there to hang out.

“The community school money has provided services to students who otherwise would not have them,” principal Moy said. “Simple as that.” 

More on K-12 schools

Schools in poorer neighborhoods struggle to keep teachers. How offering them more power might help

School funding proposal aims to achieve equity, but does it go far enough?

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Carolyn Jones K-12 Education Reporter

Carolyn Jones covers K-12 education at CalMatters. A longtime news reporter, she’s covered education for nearly a decade, focusing on everything from special education to state funding policies to inequities... More by Carolyn Jones

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The Pros and Cons of AI in Special Education

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Special education teachers fill out mountains of paperwork, customize lessons for students with a wide range of learning differences, and attend hours of bureaucratic meetings.

It’s easy to see why it would be tempting to outsource parts of that job to a robot.

While there may never be a special educator version of “Star Wars”’ protocol droid C-3PO, generative artificial tools—including ChatGPT and others developed with the large language models created by its founder, Open AI—can help special education teachers perform parts of their job more efficiently, allowing them to spend more time with their students, experts and educators say.

But those shortcuts come with plenty of cautions, they add.

Teachers need to review artificial intelligence’s suggestions carefully to ensure that they are right for specific students. Student data—including diagnoses of learning differences or cognitive disorders—need to be kept private.

Even special educators who have embraced the technology urge to proceed with care.

“I’m concerned about how AI is being presented right now to educators, that it’s this magical tool,” said Julie Tarasi, who teaches special education at Lakeview Middle School in the Park Hill school district near Kansas City, Mo. She recently completed a course in AI sponsored by the International Society for Technology in Education. “And I don’t think that the AI literacy aspect of it is necessarily being [shared] to the magnitude that it should be with teachers.”

Park Hill is cautiously experimenting with AI’s potential as a paperwork partner for educators and an assistive technology for some students in special education.

The district is on the vanguard. Only about 1 in 6 principals and district leaders—16 percent—said their schools or districts were piloting AI tools or using them in a limited manner with students in special education, according to a nationally representative EdWeek Research Center survey conducted in March and April.

AI tools may work best for teachers who already have a deep understanding of what works for students in special education, and of the tech itself, said Amanda Morin, a member of the advisory board for the learner-variability project at Digital Promise, a nonprofit organization that works on equity and technology issues in schools.

“If you feel really confident in your special education knowledge and experience and you have explored AI [in depth], I think those two can combine in a way that can really accelerate the way you serve students,” Morin said.

But “if you are a novice at either, it’s not going to serve your students well because you don’t know what you don’t know yet,” she added. “You may not even know if the tool is giving you a good answer.”

Here are some of the areas where Park Hill educators and other school and district leaders see AI’s promise for special education—and what caveats to look out for:

Promise: Reducing the paperwork burden.

Some special education teachers spend as many as eight hours a week writing student-behavior plans, progress reports, and other documentation.

“Inevitably, we’re gonna get stuck, we’re gonna struggle to word things,” Tarasi said. AI can be great for busting through writer’s block or finding a clearer, more objective way to describe a student’s behavior, she said.

What’s more, tools such as Magic School—an AI platform created for K-12 education—can help special education teachers craft the student learning goals that must be included in an individualized education program, or IEP.

“I can say ‘I need a reading goal to teach vowels and consonants to a student,’ and it will generate a goal,” said Tara Bachmann, Park Hill’s assistive-technology facilitator. “You can put the criteria you want in, but it makes it measurable, then my teachers can go in and insert the specifics about the student” without involving AI, Bachmann said.

These workarounds can cut the process of writing an IEP by up to 30 minutes, Bachmann said—giving teachers more time with students.

AI can also come to the rescue when a teacher needs to craft a polite, professional email to a parent after a stress-inducing encounter with their child.

Some Park Hill special education teachers use “Goblin,” a free tool aimed at helping neurodivergent people organize tasks, to take the “spice” out of those messages, Tarasi said.

A teacher could write “the most emotionally charged email. Then you hit a button called ‘formalize.’ And it makes it like incredibly professional,” Bachmann said. “Our teachers like it because they have a way to release the emotion but still communicate the message to the families.”

Caveat: Don’t share personally identifiable student information. Don’t blindly embrace AI’s suggestions.

Teachers must be extremely careful about privacy issues when using AI tools to write documents—from IEPs to emails—that contain sensitive student information, Tarasi said.

“If you wouldn’t put it on a billboard outside of the school, you should not be putting it into any sort of AI,” Tarasi said. “There’s no sense of guaranteed privacy.”

Tarasi advises her colleagues to “absolutely not put in names” when using generative AI to craft documents, she said. While including students’ approximate grade level may be OK in certain circumstances, inputting their exact age or mentioning a unique diagnosis is a no-no.

To be sure, if the information teachers put into AI is too vague, educators might not get accurate suggestions for their reports. That requires a balance.

“You need to be specific without being, without being pinpoint,” Tarasi said.

Caveat: AI works best for teachers who already understand special education

Another caution: Although AI tools can help teachers craft a report or customize a general education lesson for students in special education, teachers need to already have a deep understanding of their students to know whether to adopt its recommendations.

Relying solely on AI tools for lesson planning or writing reports “takes the individualized out of individualized education,” Morin said. “Because what [the technology] is doing is spitting out things that come up a lot” as opposed to carefully considering what’s best for a specific student, like a good teacher can.

Educators can tweak their prompts—the questions they ask AI—to get better, more specific advice, she added.

“A seasoned special educator would be able to say ‘So I have a student with ADHD, and they’re fidgety’ and get more individualized recommendations,” Morin said.

Promise: Making lessons more accessible.

Ensuring students in special education master the same course content as their peers can require teachers to spend hours simplifying the language of a text to an appropriate reading level.

Generative AI tools can accomplish that same task—often called “leveling a text"—in just minutes, said Josh Clark, the leader of the Landmark School , a private school in Massachusetts serving children with dyslexia and other language-based learning differences.

“If you have a class of 30 kids in 9th grade, and they’re all reading about photosynthesis, then for one particular child, you can customize [the] reading level without calling them out and without anybody else knowing and without you, the teacher, spending hours,” Clark said. “I think that’s a super powerful way of allowing kids to access information they may not be able to otherwise.”

Similarly, in Park Hill, Bachmann has used Canva—a design tool with a version specifically geared toward K-12 schools and therefore age-appropriate for many students—to help a student with cerebral palsy create the same kind of black-and-white art his classmates were making.

Kristen Ponce, the district’s speech and language pathologist, has used Canva to provide visuals for students in special education as they work to be more specific in their communication.

Case-in-point: One of Ponce’s students loves to learn about animals, but he has a very clear idea of what he’s looking for, she said. If the student just says “bear,” Canva will pull up a picture of, for instance, a brown grizzly. But the student may have been thinking of a polar bear.

That gives Ponce the opportunity to tell him, “We need to use more words to explain what you’re trying to say here,” she said. “We were able to move from ‘bear’ to ‘white bear on ice.’”

Caveat: It’s not always appropriate to use AI as an accessibility tool.

Not every AI tool can be used with every student. For instance, there are age restrictions for tools like ChatGPT, which isn’t for children under 13 or those under 18 without parent permission, Bachmann said. (ChatGPT does not independently verify a user’s age.)

“I caution my staff about introducing it to children who are too young and remembering that and that we try to focus on what therapists and teachers can do collectively to make life easier for [students],” she said.

“Accessibility is great,” she said. But when a teacher is thinking about “unleashing a child freely on AI, there is caution to it.”

Promise: Using AI tools to help students in special education communicate.

Park Hill is just beginning to use AI tools to help students in special education express their ideas.

One recent example: A student with a traumatic brain injury that affected her language abilities made thank you cards for several of her teachers using Canva.

“She was able to generate personal messages to people like the school nurses,” Bachmann said. “To her physical therapist who has taken her to all kinds of events outside in the community. She said, ‘You are my favorite therapist.’ She got very personal.”

There may be similar opportunities for AI to help students in special education write more effectively.

Some students with learning and thinking differences have trouble organizing their thoughts or getting their point across.

“When we ask a child to write, we’re actually asking them to do a whole lot of tasks at once,” Clark said. Aspects of writing that might seem relatively simple to a traditional learner—word retrieval, grammar, punctuation, spelling—can be a real roadblock for some students in special education, he said.

“It’s a huge distraction,” Clark said. The student may “have great ideas, but they have difficulty coming through.”

Caveat: Students may miss out on the critical-thinking skills writing builds.

Having students with language-processing differences use AI tools to better express themselves holds potential, but if it is not done carefully, students may miss developing key skills, said Digital Promise’s Morin.

AI “can be a really positive adaptive tool, but I think you have to be really structured about how you’re doing it,” she said.

ChatGPT or a similar tool may be able to help a student with dyslexia or a similar learning difference “create better writing, which I think is different than writing better,” Morin said.

Since it’s likely that students will be able to use those tools in the professional world, it makes sense that they begin using them in school, she said.

But the tools available now may not adequately explain the rationale behind the changes they make to a student’s work or help students express themselves more clearly in the future.

“The process is just as important as the outcome, especially with kids who learn differently, right?” Morin said. “Your process matters.”

Clark agreed on the need for moving cautiously. His own school is trying what he described as “isolated experiments” in using AI to help students with language-processing differences express themselves better.

The school is concentrating, for now, on older students preparing to enter college. Presumably, many will be able to use AI to complete some postsecondary assignments. “How do we make sure it’s an equal playing field?” Clark said.

A version of this article appeared in the May 22, 2024 edition of Education Week as The Pros and Cons of AI in Special Education

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What's in this year's federal budget? Here are all of the announcements we already know about

Treasurer Jim Chalmers will hand down his third budget on Tuesday night, but has been tempering expectations for weeks in the lead-up, warning Australians not to expect a "cash splash".

Inflation remains a key challenge for the government, and we already have a pretty good idea of how Mr Chalmers plans to use his budget to provide cost-of-living relief while also trying to jump-start a slowing economy and navigate growing uncertainty overseas.

Here are the measures we already know about before the treasurer reveals all at 7:30pm AEST.

Short on time?

There's been no shortage of announcements in the lead-up to the budget. If you're interested in a specific topic, tap on the links below to take you there:

Cost-of-living relief

Education, training and hecs changes, tax changes, future made in australia, health and aged care, paid parental leave, domestic violence, defence and foreign affairs, environment, infrastructure, additional announcements.

Is your area of interest not covered?

• Tell us what other cost-of-living measures you're hoping to see included in this year's budget .

The bottom line

Will the budget be in surplus or deficit?

• The budget will deliver a surplus of $9.3 billion for the 2023-24 financial year, making it the second consecutive budget surplus in almost two decades
• That said, the following three financial years are all forecasted to have larger deficits than previously expected in December, but the size of each deficit is not yet known
• Overall, the treasurer says Australia's total debt has been reduced by $152 billion in the 2023-24 financial year, and the budget will benefit by a $25 billion boost in revenue upgrades

What does the budget mean for inflation and interest rates?

• The treasurer has repeatedly said he's kept inflation in mind when crafting this year's budget, and is confident that the measures won't contribute to it
• In fact, Treasury predicts inflation will fall to 2.75 per cent by December — well before the Reserve Bank's most recent forecast for the end of 2025 — due to yet-to-be-announced budget measures taking pressure off inflation
• For what it's worth, RBA governor Michele Bullock wasn't too concerned about the upcoming budget last Tuesday, saying she  would wait to see its impact first , but she said the treasurer reassured her that he was focused on curbing inflation  

The reworked stage 3 tax cuts form the centrepiece of the government's budget. They were announced in January, legislated in February and come into effect on July 1.

The changes to tax cuts originally legislated by the Morrison government mean that all Australian taxpayers who earn more than $18,200 (that is, more than the tax-free threshold) will get a tax cut.

Before Labor's changes, the original stage 3 tax cuts were skewed more heavily to higher-income earners .

A person with a taxable income between $45,000 and $120,000 will receive a tax cut of $804 more come July 1  under the revised stage 3 changes compared to the Morrison government's tax plan.

However, the government has hinted at other cost-of-living measures, with the treasurer calling the tax cuts the "foundation stone" of broader assistance.

Among those measures appears to be energy bill relief (in addition to what some states have already announced), with the treasurer pointing out that last year's measure curbed living costs and eased inflation.

Adjustments to rent assistance also seem likely, as do increases to JobSeeker and the aged pension.

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The biggest announcement in this area is the wiping out of $3 billion worth of HECS debts  triggered by last year's indexation of 7.1 per cent.

It means student debts will be lowered for more than 3 million Australians, with the average student receiving an indexation credit of about $1,200 for the past two years.

The debt relief will also apply for apprentices who owe money through the VET Student Loan program or the Australian Apprenticeship Support Loan.

Speaking of university, the government is aiming to tackle "placement poverty" by providing financial support to students to help make ends meet while they complete practical hands-on training as part of their course.

Under the scheme, those studying nursing, teaching or social work will receive a Commonwealth Prac Payment of up to $319.50 a week, but they will be subjected to means testing.

Similarly, apprentices willing to learn clean energy skills as part of their trade will be eligible to receive up to $10,000 in payments . The scheme already exists, but the government has broadened the eligibility to include apprentices in the automotive, electrical, housing and construction sectors based on industry feedback.

Universities will also be required to stop a surge in the number of international students, as part of the government's broader plans to cut annual migration levels back to 260,000 a year — much to the concern of peak education bodies .

Another  $90 million will be put towards 15,000 fee-free TAFE and VET places to get more workers into the housing construction sector , with an extra 5,000 pre-apprenticeship places provided from 2025.

While we can expect to hear more about the stage 3 tax cuts, it seems likely that the government will unveil other changes to tax in the budget to encourage business investment.

One such change will be the extension of the government's instant asset write-off scheme for small businesses for another year, allowing businesses with a turnover of less than $10 million to claim $20,000 from eligible assets.

However, the same measure from last year's budget is still yet to pass parliament — and businesses are urgently calling on them to pass the measure before it expires on June 30 .

In addition to spending more to attract skilled workers in the housing and construction sectors, the government is also tipping billions of dollars into building new homes across the country .

It's estimated the government will be putting roughly $11.3 billion towards housing, as the government works to deliver its promised 1.2 million new homes by 2030.

$1 billion will be spent on crisis and transitional accommodation for women and children fleeing family violence and youth through the National Housing Infrastructure Facility, which is re-allocated funding.

The government has also committed to providing $9.3 billion to states and territories under a new five-year agreement to combat homelessness, assist in crisis support, and to build and repair social housing — including $400 million of federal homelessness funding each year, matched by the states and territories.

Another $1 billion will be given to states and territories to build other community infrastructure to speed up the home-building process, including roads, sewerage, energy and water supplies.

The government has also committed to consulting with universities to construct more purpose-built student accommodation.

Overall, the funding announcements for housing build on the $25 billion already committed to new housing investments, with $10 billion of that in the Housing Australia Future Fund, which is designed to help build 30,000 social and affordable rental homes.

The government says the housing funding measures will also help take the pressure off the private rental market, which is experiencing record-low vacancy rates and surging growth in weekly rent prices.

Aside from the revised stage 3 tax cuts, the revival of local manufacturing is the other centrepiece of the government's budget this year.

The Future Made in Australia Act (which is often referred to without the "act" on the end) is bringing together a range of new and existing manufacturing and renewable energy programs under one umbrella, totalling in excess of $15 billion.

In other words, the government is putting serious taxpayer money towards supporting local industry and innovation, especially in the renewable energy space.

A number of measures have already been announced (or re-announced), including:

• $1 billion for the Solar SunShot program to increase the number of Australian-made solar panels
• $2 billion for its Hydrogen Headstart scheme to accelerate the green hydrogen industry
• $470 million to build the world's first "fault-tolerant" quantum computer in Brisbane , matching the Queensland government's contribution
• $840 million for the Gina Rinehart-backed mining company Arafura to develop its combined rare earths mine and refinery in Central Australia
• $230 million for WA lithium hopeful Liontown Resources , which is also partly owned by Gina Rinehart
• $566 million over 10 years for Geoscience Australia to create detailed maps of critical minerals under Australia's soil and seabed
• $400 million to create Australia's first high-purity alumina processing facility in Gladstone
• $185 million to fast-track Renascor Resources' Siviour Graphite Project in South Australia
• A $1 billion export deal to supply Germany with 100 infantry fighting vehicles , manufactured at Rheinmetall's facility in Ipswich

All up, the government is spending an extra $8.5 billion on health and Medicare in this year's federal budget, with $227 million of that put towards creating another 29 urgent care clinics.

Millions of dollars are also being poured into medical research, including $20 million for childhood brain cancer research , and a $50 million grant for Australian scientists developing the world's first long-term artificial heart .

Another $49.1 million is being invested to support people who have endometriosis and other complex gynaecological conditions such as chronic pelvic pain and polycystic ovarian syndrome. The funding will allow for extended consultation times and increased rebates to be added to the Medicare Benefits Schedule.

As for aged care, the government hasn't announced anything specific for the sector, nor has it outlined its response to the Aged Care Taskforce report that was delivered in March.

Parents accessing the government-funded paid parental leave scheme will be paid superannuation in addition to their payments from next July .

Under the current program, a couple with a newborn or newly adopted child can access up to 20 weeks of paid parental leave at the national minimum wage — however that figure will continue to rise until it reaches 26 weeks in July 2026 .

The plan, which Labor will take to the next election, would see superannuation paid at 12 per cent of the paid parental leave rate, which is based on the national minimum wage of $882.75 per week.

The cost to the budget is not yet known, however a review commissioned by the former government estimated that paying super on top of paid parental leave would cost about $200 million annually.

About 180,000 families access the government paid parental leave payments each year.

The federal government has pledged almost $1 billion to combat violence against women , including permanent funding to help victim-survivors leave violent relationships, and a suite of online measures to combat online misogyny and prevent children from viewing pornography.

The $925.2 million will go towards permanently establishing the Leaving Violence Program over five years, after it was established as a pilot program in October 2021 known as the Escaping Violence Program.

The program will provide eligible victim-survivors with an individualised support package of up to $1,500 in cash and up to $3,500 in goods and services, plus safety planning, risk assessment and referrals to other essential services for up to 12 weeks.

While the funding has been broadly welcomed, survivors and advocates want to see more investment .

The package also includes funding to create a pilot of age verification technology to protect children from harmful content, including the "easy access to pornography" online, which the government says will tackle extreme online misogyny that is "fuelling harmful attitudes towards women".

The federal government is planning to spend an extra $50 billion on defence over the next decade , meaning Australia's total defence spend will be equivalent to 2.4 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) within 10 years.

All up, the government is planning to invest a total of $330 billion through to 2033-34, which includes the initial cost for the AUKUS initiative to purchase nuclear-powered submarines.

Part of that $50 billion will be spent on upgrading defence bases across northern Australia, with $750 million to be allocated in the budget for the "hardening" of its bases in the coming financial year.

More than $1 billion of that funding will also be spent on an immediate boost on long-range missiles and targeting systems.

In the Pacific, Australia has committed $110 million to fund development initiatives in Tuvalu , including an undersea telecommunications cable and direct budget support.

The government has also pledged $492 million to the Asian Development Bank to provide grants to vulnerable countries in the Asia-Pacific.

The only dedicated announcement for the environment so far is the scrapping of the waste export levy , also known as a "recycling tax".

The proposed $4 per tonne levy was first legislated by the Morrison government in 2020 in a bid to reduce and regulate waste exports, after China announced it would no longer handle Australian rubbish.

Waste industry players had been concerned that once the levy was introduced in July, it would have caused more waste to be sent to landfill instead of being recycled.

The scrapping of the waste export levy is part of Australia's broader move to manage its own waste.

A slew of funding commitments have been made around the country, including a $1.9 billion funding commitment for upgrades in Western Sydney, ranging from road improvements to planning projects and train line extensions.

The government is also putting $3.25 billion towards Victoria's North East Link, which is being built between the Eastern Freeway and M80 Ring Road in Melbourne.

Ahead of the Brisbane Olympics in 2032, the government is also chipping in $2.75 billion to fund a Brisbane to Sunshine Coast rail link , matching the amount promised by Queensland Premier Steven Miles. (That said, $1.6 billion had been previously announced by the federal government.)

Also in Queensland, the Bruce Highway will receive $467 million for upgrades, while Canberra will receive $50 million to extend its light rail.

A proposed high-speed train line between Sydney and Newcastle will also receive $78.8 million to deliver a business case for the project.

The government will also put $21 million towards the creation of a national road safety data hub.

There are several other funding commitments the government has made in the lead-up to the budget that don't fit neatly into the categories above.

The government will spend $161.3 million on creating a national firearms register , which will give police and other law-enforcement agencies near real-time information on firearms and who owns them across the states and territories.

The money will be spent over four years to establish the register, and comes after state and territory leaders agreed to set up the register in December last year. The government has described the register as the biggest change to Australia's firearm management systems in almost 30 years.

Another $166.4 million will be spent on expanding anti-money-laundering reporting obligations , requiring real estate agents, lawyers and accountants to report dodgy transactions in a move that will bring Australia in line with the rest of the developed world.

And ahead of the 2032 Brisbane Olympic Games, the government has given the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) a $249.7 million funding boost to upgrade its facilities to support local athletes.

The government has also committed to a $107 million support package for farmers, after announcing it will end Australia's live sheep export trade by 2028 .

Farmers and regional communities will also benefit from a $519.1 million funding boost to the government's Future Drought Fund.

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