Did you know that reading aloud is the single most important thing a parent or caregiver can do to help a child prepare for reading and learning?Statistics show that children from professional families have heard about 45 million words; children from working class families have heard about 26 million words and children from families at or below the poverty level have heard about 13 million words. These numbers show that there is a “30 million word gap” between those children from professional families and those children who come from families at or below the poverty level.
• Reading aloud stimulates language development even before a child can talk.
• Reading aloud to a child for 15 minutes every day - approximately the time of a bedtime story - is crucial for reading, learning and language skill development.
• If a child is not reading at grade level by the end of the first grade, there is an 88% probability the child will not be reading at grade level by the end of the fourth grade.
• Nationally, 37% of children arrive in kindergarten without the skills necessary to begin their learning journey.
• More than half the children in the US (13 million) will not hear a bedtime story tonight.
DID YOU KNOW: Cleveland Hearing & Speech Center in University Circle is one of the many locations of the Little Free Library. To encourage reading and literacy in children, any child may choose a book to read and keep.
