Reading: On Reading Aloud

Why Read Aloud?

 

            Today's Snack: Reading aloud is like oatmeal to a child's brain - very nutritious, very comfy and warm. So have a nice bowl of oatmeal with a little brown sugar on top . . . drink milk . . . and read the back of the oatmeal container out loud while you're snacking!

 

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Supplies:

Purchase the book, The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease,

either new or from an online used book marketing website

 

            The very best book on the importance of reading aloud is the focus of today's Treat. Jim Trelease is about as important to the future of the United States as anybody in our nation's history.

 

He single-handedly has started and maintained the reading-aloud movement. It is the one single thing that every parent, every teacher, every after-school programmer, and everybody else who cares about kids can do that makes a really big difference in not only their ability to use language, but their motivation to do so.

 

            There are hundreds of purposes for reading aloud, but the most important one is that it's the best way to make a young person fall in love with reading. The more time you spend watching football, the more you want to play it. The more you listen to recorded music, the more you want to make music yourself.

 

It's the same thing with reading. And since the major difference between low-income and high-income students in this country is the amount of background information that they have in their brains through outside-of-school learning, then doubling or tripling the amount of time we adults devote to reading aloud to disadvantaged children may be the single most important way to catch them up so that they truly can have a level playing field educationally.

 

Trelease has gone all over the country talking to parents, teachers and professional groups about children, literature and television. He was an artist and writer for a newspaper and originally self-published his famous, best-selling read-aloud handbook. Now it's a worldwide best seller and his lectures are available on video.

 

            He's retired now, but his website is a wealth of information that explains in great detail how important reading aloud is, for all of our futures.

 

            See his website, www.trelease-on-reading.com