Rather frequently, my kids come up with things that amaze me. They remember details from stories. They remember trivia. They make connections between different sets of information.
Given what I've observed about their memory and comprehension and problem-solving, I am thinking that it's due to the amount of reading aloud we do together. So often, my husband and I need to see words on a page to actually understand them, but the kids can hear the words and benefit more than we could from just hearing, and often benefit more (just by hearing) than I can by listening AND looking at the words both.
It would be really interesting to do some research on families who do 10-15 hours per week of read-alouds, and compare those families to ones who read aloud together only 2 hours per week. No, it would have to be less than that. Even 15 minutes of reading aloud per day would do good things for young brains. It would be interesting to look at families who read 10 hours/week and those who read less than 1 hour/week ... well beyond the time the kids learn to read for themselves. I'm not talking about reading aloud to 4 year olds; I'm talking about reading aloud to 14 year olds.
I sometimes wonder how much we could improve people's thinking skills, memory, and comprehension if we would just delay the teaching of reading until age 10 at the earliest. What would happen to education in this country if half the schoolday could involve the class reading good books (not textbooks!) aloud and discussing them?
Saturday, September 29, 2007
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Matt was telling me that he recently learned in school that the steady decline in good vision has been attributed to...
ReplyDeleteliteracy.
Of course, I can't trade my books for anything...
(and Maria says "HI to my best friend's wife!")
Funny how our eye doctor insists there's no connection whatsoever between having your nose in a book and ruining your eyes.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe him. The problem is when I want to know if there's anything I can do to forestall the need for bifocals. If the doctor doesn't believe that our behavior and use of our eyeballs has any effect on our need for glasses, he can't give me any helpful information of what to avoid or what exercises to do.
As for Matt's lesson, I think it's mostly literacy but not JUST literacy. The decline in vision is also due to the amount of time spent on other near-vision (including too much being indoors and away from windows).
Given your eyeballs and Matt's eyeballs, you probably shouldn't let your kids read till they're 12.
Hi to Maria and Rose, too.
I wonder if there's a connection between screen time, as in computer or TV or video games, and the decline in vision?
ReplyDeleteReading aloud also affects more than eye sight as I know the strength of my voice has declined over the years, and while I believe it's probably a part of natural aging, I also attribute it to reading aloud as I do that in a different way than I converse.
Thoughtful, post, as usual, Susan.
Mrs Amused,
ReplyDeleteThe things I've read indicate that the vision problems have resulted from an increase in "close vision." That would include reading, writing, and all those screens.
And yes, my voice has definitely taken hits over the years. I don't know if it's aging or overuse, or if it's just due to illnesses that kept taking up residence in my tonsils and voicebox. Could be (?) that my voice was the weak spot on me (for viruses to attack) because of overuse. Reading aloud sure does do something different to your voice than does conversation!