We know that one of the very best things any parent can do for their child’s development in reading is to read aloud to the child. Over the years, many parents and former students have told us stories of their experience reading and being read to. What these stories tell us is that reading aloud together is far more than just a support for reading development; it can be a vital and deeply cherished time in which parents and children explore the world together through books and conversation. Here are a few of the stories we have heard.
- She was twenty and she told us that her mom had read aloud to her every night till she went off to university. The first time she came home for a visit her mom kissed her and said goodnight. “Wait,” she said to her mom, “we can’t go to bed till you read to me!” And so their custom continued, but over time it evolved into each of them alternating to read to the other from their current book.
- A mom told us she went to visit her son in the large house he shared with a couple of other college students. Her son had told her to be sure to bring along the book she was reading so they could sit together in the evenings and read as they had always done in their family.
- A mom of three children, five, eight and eleven years old, told me she read aloud to each of them every evening for half hour from their own book. I wondered that she could squeeze out an hour and a half a day for reading aloud. She said, “Are you kidding? Looking forward to that hour and a half devoted to reading and to devoting time to each child is what keeps me going!”
- Keeping reading aloud going all through the years at home gives parents a strong connection with their child in relation to all aspects of life. One mom told me that, to her eleven year-old’s delight, she had just finished reading aloud Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, which had provoked from her child a constant stream of questions on the history and lifestyles of the period, to say nothing of the vigorous vocabulary and the long and complex sentence structures. Her child had requested that they next delve into the Bible and Shakespeare to see how far they could get. Reading aloud is a powerful foundation for the study of art, history, current events and literature for middle school years and beyond.
- One dad, a doctor, told us he continued reading aloud to his daughter through middle school. He said he couldn’t imagine how else he could have comfortably held the long, complicated discussions with her about life and character, love and relationships, that meant so much to their father daughter bond and her future as an independent adult making her way in the world. All those literary characters, situations and plots made it possible for him to broach subjects with her objectively and openly and made it possible for her to listen comfortably and take in just what she needed, when she needed it. He said reading aloud is much more valuable and more deeply meaningful in a parent child relationship than simple support for a child’s reading level and love of books.
One last benefit of regular read-aloud at home: it supports the child’s work at school. When parents continue reading aloud to their child two years above the child’s own reading level, not only is family time filled with rich companionship and fine discussions, but also the child’s mind is filled with appropriate subject matter for research and projects at school with work partners.
Donna Bryant Goertz, founder of Austin Montessori School in Austin, Texas, acts as a resource to schools around the world. Donna’s book,Children Who Are Not Yet Peaceful: Preventing Exclusion in the Early Elementary Classroom draws on her thirty years of experience guiding a community of thirty-five six-to-nine year-olds. She received her Montessori elementary diploma from the Fondazione Centro Internazionale Studi Montessoriani in Bergamo, Italy, and her assistants to infancy diploma from The Montessori Institute of Denver, Colorado.
Such a wonderful post! And great reminder that you are never too old to be read aloud to.
I read a similar story once of a dad and daughter who read aloud to each other every evening, and even when she went off to college they’d call each other at night to read to each other over the phone. What an amazing connection! I love reading to my little ones, I hope they’ll let me read to them for many many years to come! =)
I love that story, Marcy! And the key to keeping reading aloud going over the years is not to let a break occur. The continuity matters most, as well as negotiating the subject matter.
In the era of the virtual reality, among him ” it was once… ” and the “… they lived happy forever “, stories of fairies, myths, fables and legends, derived of the oral tradition, that were transcribed for the paper and today they allow …to examine us the conceptions of different people, the infantile public still delights with hares and turtles speakers, geniuses of lamps and your flying rugs.
Hearing and/or counting histories the child enriches your vocabulary, at the same time that it receives that that the histories reveal in relation to the human values, easily adaptable to the infantile mentality for presenting a restricted number of characters, opposed by simple motivations as: generosity and selfishness, trust and betrayal, love and hate and at the end, the good conducts are rewarded while the wickedness implicates hard punishments on your agents, valuing the smartness, the initiative and the solidarity allowing the explicitação of judgements.
The infantile histories stimulate the imaginary of the child that is motivated to create, to imagine, to emit opinions on the characters and to identify with some of them. The child’s projection in a certain character is important in the measure in that it supplies data of your life, your personality and her form to link with the people and the world they are important so that the adult knows her with difficulty and it can facilitate him/her the conviviality with the human differences, the advantages and the obstacles certain characteristics, expressed for her same.
Another important resource is to leave that the child ” reproduces ” the counted history to your way, where you/he/she can – to observe the changes, for her done, representing part of your needs, desires and wills. The counted histories for the child stimulate the creativity and fertile imaginations of the infantile world
I think a center, an organized space in the house or class, provided shelves of books with impressions and several drawings, to show for the child that she can have access to different reading forms, besides it could have the children manuscripts or your creations transcribed by the teacher because, a lot before they learning how to read and to write, they learn how to dictate your thoughts and your histories, as well as knowing the the diferent forms to use them. The principal purpose is for doing the child to wake up the desire to read and of forming habit of handling books.” Maria Eugênia
Ask Sonal Bowness at Austin Montessori School for the description, recommendations and information for our “Elementary Read-Aloud Book Club” as well as the book lists for the two levels of elementary. This is how we support parents to continue reading aloud to their children three years above their reading level as long as they live at home. sonalb@austinmontessori.org.
We began a little tradition of spending family time in our huge family bed when my son was born. We would, at first, simply look at him in awe, but eventually it evolved to play, talks, comfort. My son, as soon as he was able to talk, would come get us and grab our hands and say, “Let’s play on the bed.” It was something the people around me noticed, and would always comment on how amazing it was to see us together on the bed. It simply felt right to us. Now that time has evolved into reading aloud. My husband and my son, and I take turns reading to each other. We read many levels above his current year. It has spurred many conversations and questions about many different things. My family is just doing what feels right to us and works best for our life style. It’s good to find out the beneficial qualities of the story time my family adores so.