These are just a few of the lessons I learned from Jim Trelease's "The Read-Aloud Handbook." This is an exciting book in that it provides simple tools for helping your children, at home and in the classroom, to learn to enjoy reading and to become lifelong readers. It will also help you to better evaluate the reading environment in your child's classroom, library, and home.
- There are reliable studies that confirm the importance of reading aloud and of SSR (Sustained Silent Reading).
- As little as fifteen minutes a day in reading aloud to your children can have a significant effect on their becoming lifelong readers.
- When you read aloud to your children, they gain both "background knowledge" and a richer vocabulary.
- Your child's listening level is not the same as his/her reading level.
- It's important to read aloud to your children individually, as their interests and maturity levels may vary.
- You children will benefit from your reading aloud to them from the time they are babies up into their teens.
- To help your children become readers, supply books, a book basket in the location where it is most likely to be used, and a bed lamp.
- Far more boys than girls end up in remedial reading; fathers pay a key role in encouraging reading through reading for pleasure themselves and reading aloud to their children.
- Studies show children benefit from recreational "lite" reading of series and comic books.
- Libraries can learn from the mega-bookstores and Oprah how to "sell" books and reading to students.
