The importance of reading
As an eight-year-old girl, I can remember the excitement of boarding the Brisbane City Council library bus, as a mobile library service that visited our suburb on a fortnightly basis. There is deep meaning in one such story I read in my childhood, as revealed in this extract from Mary Poppins by P. M. Travers.
"Shall we too, Mary Poppins?" he asked, blurting out the question.
"Shall you too, what?" she enquired with a sniff.
"Live happily ever afterwards?" he said eagerly.
A smile, half sad, half tender, played faintly round her mouth.
"Perhaps," she said thoughtfully. "It all depends."
"What on, Mary Poppins?"
"On you," she said quietly, as she carried the crumpets to the fire..."
Extensive research supports the findings that the amount of free reading done outside of school has consistently been found to relate to growth in vocabulary, reading comprehension, verbal fluency, and general information (Anderson, Wilson, and Fielding 1988; Greaney 1980; Guthrie and Greaney 1991; Taylor, Frye, and Maruyama 1990). 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 (Krashen 1993; Cunningham and Stanovich 1991; Stanovich and Cunningham 1993). More recent research from 2011, conducted in the United Kingdom with 21,000 children and young people, identifies that children and young people are reading less as their lives get more crowded.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis once said, “There are many little ways to enlarge your child’s world. Love of books is the best of all.” Encouraging children to love and read books is so important. We have almost a quarter-century of studies that document how literacy blooms wherever students have access to books they want to read, permission to choose their own books, and time to get lost in them. Our Seymour and Cotton Libraries host enticing collections of literature. Books are key to children becoming skilled, thoughtful, avid readers.
Our school libraries help our students find reliable information, use the information effectively, think critically, make informed decisions, work productively with others, build knowledge and understanding of the world, safely navigate the internet, communicate and share their ideas, as well as find great reads to meet personal interest and abilities. The Cotton Library and Seymour Library are both warm and inviting learning hubs, where your daughter will be able to seek a recommendation from the friendly library staff for the selection of her reading material for the upcoming holidays.
Multiple studies have documented the impact of classroom libraries. There are more books in the classrooms of high-achieving schools, and more students who read frequently. Reading researcher, Richard Allington, put it, "If I were working in a high-poverty school and had to choose between spending $15,000 each year on more books for classrooms and libraries, or on one more teaching assistant, I would opt for the books.”
Instructional teaching fads come and go. But human needs and desires remain constant. Every student deserves the pleasure and meaning that literate adults find in the pages of books we love. There is an abundance of interesting research for parents and educators, showing that we should encourage our children and young people to adopt reading habits that make reading a part of their daily activities. One research study concluded that it is essential to make the time for children and young people to read as the evidence shows a clear link between reading outside of class and their achievement. Such evidence is reflected through the finding that young people who read outside of class daily were thirteen times more likely to read above the expected level for their age.
I hope your daughter has time to immerse herself in a great book over the forthcoming holiday break. In the meantime, I share an extract from a favourite childhood story – The Velveteen Rabbit (Margery Williams), which is a beautiful story (with a much deeper meaning) to explore for both children and adults.
"Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. "It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn’t happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand."
On behalf of all staff at Somerville House, I wish all families a relaxing, safe and happy time together over the holiday break.
Mrs Kim Kiepe
Principal
Acknowledgement: Clark, C. (2012). Children's and Young People's Reading Today. Findings from the 2011 National Literacy Trust's annual survey. London: National Literacy Trust.