Books have inherent value to students, and schools in the Great Sacramento Area are tasked with making these values practical both in and out of the class.
Summer reading challenges like those at Raymond Case Elementary School in Elk Grove or the Sacramento Public Library's Reading Challenge 2018 may have reached their finales, but, the desire to have children engage with a book over the summer, while young, and outside of class will likely continue.
The reason schools and other public institutions continue to engage students outside the classroom for learning is to serve the student through what are considered critical times.
According to Dr. Marcy Merrill, Professor of Language and Literacy at Sacramento State University, these timely efforts focus on the potential loss of cognitive skills and educational gains over the summer and capitalize on opportune moments in a child's ability to learn.
1. Reading challenges hit the summer to keep students sharp
“We know students when they are not in school for three months they will lose some of their education,” said Dr. Merrill. “It’s time where we’re not making gains really, unless a child is an independent reader doing school work during the summer.”
At Raymond Case Elementary School, the students are engaged with challenges to read over the summer. This summer, the school organized "Mr. Santin’s Summer Reading Challenge."
This program allowed students to earn a free book for every five books they read from the Sacramento Public Library. The program was meant to address the issue of children losing up to 25 to 30 percent of their school year learning in the summer, according to Raymond Case Elementary Principal John Santin.
“My goal is really to make sure that our children are reading so that there isn’t a loss in reading,” he said.
2. Students gain vocabulary from reading
“Certainly, reading helps children increase their vocabulary. It enhances their vocabulary development,” said Dr. Merrill. She added that children can learn more words from reading other words and can also help their ability to recognize words and learn words in context.
Books are building vocabulary and, according to Santin at Raymond Case Elementary, that importance is reflected in the schools. Santin acknowledged that there is research on a word gap between historically disadvantaged families and non-historically disadvantaged families.
The study by Betty Hart and Todd Risley made claims that children of low-income families are exposed to about 30 million fewer words by the age of three than those of children in professional families. According to the Brookings Institute, the study has been supported by research, however, the quantity of words has been a point of discussion.
On the issue of the variance in quantity of words, the Brookings Institute reiterated that there are many other studies affirming a “large difference between both the amount and quality of language used in parent-child interactions associated with socioeconomic disparity.”
3. Schools pushing literacy outside of the school
At Raymond Case Elementary School, the administration has been addressing the importance of early family literacy. The school, according to Santin, has been pushing for a decrease in the amount of paper and pencil homework for students in Kindergarten, 1st grade, and 2nd grade to increase the time that families and children can spend time reading, either independently or with parents reading to their children.
“What we’re trying to do [is] get away from the paper and pencil homework and focusing all of our energy on family literacy time,” said Santin.
Dr. Merrill said, “One of the biggest boons for children to do wide reading outside of school is to provide them with background knowledge. They learn more about events in time, people, cultures, ideas, objects, and they can bring what they learn to other texts and other situations and certainly enhance their academic knowledge base.”
Dr. Merrill encourages a print-literate environment for students at home. Whether students can find that in their house or at a local library with a summer reading program, she says literacy will increase in a print-literate environment.
“When we have a really print literate environment, literacy will increase, and, for a library to have a program, where children can come and have that, even if it’s not in their own house, print literate environment that’s a reason to take kids to a library program as well.”.
4. Choice matters, not necessarily content
“Choice is most important. For children who are nonreaders, who don’t consider themselves readers, who may struggle with reading, the best thing you can do is let them pick,” said Dr. Merrill.
The content of a book has some relevance to a child’s literacy. Books that have circular tales are books that have repetitive elements are designed to have the last story element lead to the repetition of the first story element.
According to Dr. Merrill, these books have merit for new readers because they’re starting to learn how to use language. The print, text, and shape of the word in those books can help enable them to read that word and add it to a “sight word vocabulary.”
However, according to Dr. Merrill, children need to be allowed to read what they what interests them.
“One never knows what’s going to entice a child and motivate them to read, but, if there’s choice, the child will be more apt to read.”
At Raymond Case Elementary, they recently secured funding so that families and student could enjoy more access to the school library book choices one evening, one day per week. The school also promotes access to books through it's Scholastic Book Fair that aims to widen the amount of books parents have at home.
“Our goal is to find every single way that we can put books into children’s hands,” said Santin.
5. The earlier engagement begins the more a child could learn
“Schools begin introducing students to books the second they step foot on campus,” said Santin.
“As soon as children enter preschool, there’s a push for the love of literacy.”
At Raymond Case, students engage in literacy instruction for about two and a half hours a day focused on foundational reading skills and early literacy. Their literacy instruction intends to meet the ability level for each child.
According to Santin, students need to be on grade level reading by the time they end third grade; students below that level could have a more difficulty with their education in the future.
The timing that people introduce children to literacy, books, or reading outside of school is important to how a child could fare in school. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, “reading books with a child beginning in early infancy can boost vocabulary and reading skills four years later, before the start of elementary school.”
“When we read to children especially ages four to five, there is a direct relationship on their success in school and their reading and cognitive skills in general,” said Dr. Merrill.
“There’s so many reasons why we read to children. We read to them so that they hear us reading. We read to them so that they understand that we are learning new things. We share a common experience.”