Analysing the Importance of Reading to Children with Focus on Pre-school Age Children - Essay Example

Importance of Reading to Children Education for toddlers and preschool children has always been a basic issue covering a considerable part of education at large. Literature on this topic has time and again revealed that proper preschool learning has been of significant help to children before they venture out into the institutionalized framework of pedagogy at schools. Now what do we imply when we speak of proper preschool learning? The answer to this question is to do with the acquisition of study skills that are imparted to children at home. What children learn at home is stored in their cognition when they move out to schools. Naturally, those who are well-bred do well in the following years and those who lack the required skills fall short of attaining the desired outcomes. Reading, which is a subset of study skills, holds an important position in this regard. The process of reading, especially early in a person’s development, calls for certain systematic approaches. The more advanced methodologies such as syntax, morphology, and semantics are generally not suggested for preschool children. This is because these processes postulate a certain amount of prior knowledge on the related areas of study, which preschool children are not expected to have. Such knowledge matrices usually accommodate for specific purposes of reading, such as attaining meaningful communicative goals or apportioning ideas or information. But children in their preschool years neither get the exposure nor do they develop enough intelligence to practice specialized knowledge sharing among peers. Bulk of their learning involves informal procedures like reading elementary signs and symbols that are visually appealing. Most parents and instructors rely on the informal approaches to learning for preschool children. It is quite clear that reading traffic signs or pictorial diagrams cannot, by any means, be regarded as a prolusion to formal education. Yet this mode of learning is widely reckoned as the progressive means to excel in a formal educational setup in high schools and beyond. This report is going to highlight the importance of reading to children who are not yet ready for admission in elementary schools. The report can be treated as a handy set of guidelines for parents who sometimes feel all at sea as to how to prepare their kids for the changeover from preschool years to the road ahead. The report includes some of the key directives for parents regarding the procedures of reading to children – what to do and what not to do while molding the pliant minds of the younger generation. It also sheds light into some of the learning disabilities found in young children. By understanding these disabilities, parents can also figure out for themselves what methodologies suit their kids the most. In addition to these points, the paper is also going to discuss the history of children’s learning and its evolution. In relation to the thesis topic, let us first of all look into the primacy of reading. Unlike any other subset of education, reading is given supreme priority as an initiating point of learning. Almost anyone related to the field of education is going to agree on the fact that there is no substitute to good, old-fashioned reading, however electronic the world may have turned into in recent decades. It is quite remarkable that most young kids learn to pick up this habit instinctively. Their curiosity makes them observe things around themselves and ask questions. Consequently, they learn to interpret signs and symbols, and later on, written words. The very process of human development is rooted in a kid’s capacity to read and think. Moreover, the nourishment of the imaginative faculties of mind, which is distinctly dissimilar from the capacity to process information in the brain, is only made possible through reading. Now it is up to the parents to see to it that their kids develop a strong inclination to read, for reading wields an influential press on both the emotive as well as the cerebral buttons of personality (Harrison, 2004, p. 3). Compton-Lilly (2003) gives an interesting outline related to the routine purpose of reading to children. Rather than highlighting the stern pedagogical importance of reading, she simply presents a few real situations that ask for commonsense approaches and validate the significance of reading. Starting from understanding signs on the road to recognizing house addresses and knowing the details of bank accounts, the importance of reading is impossible to undermine for young children as they rise to the myriad ways of the world (p. 1). Based on the discussion above, it is quite clear that the custom of reading does have very little to do with conscious partaking of education. In other words, we can claim that reading acts as a fundamental premise upon which an individual can learn and grow in all probable directions. For children, reading as an informal skill is tantamount to an adult’s spontaneous yet anticipated reaction to the external stimuli of the environment. For instance, when a kid is asked to name a color, or to define a particular sign, he/she does not need to go back to any kind of formalized method of knowledge retrieval. At the same time, any normal kid is not likely to falter on the right answer either. It is the cognitive shaping of the mind that develops with informal reading prior to schooling. The better the reading is, the more prepared the children are to receive education in schools. What happens when the practice of reading is not inculcated early in the developmental phase of children? According to a 1989 survey made by Dr. Jack Humphrey, the erstwhile Director of Reading Services and Special Projects in Evansville, lack of reading among mid-school students in Indiana resulted in total failure of constructive educational goals. The rate of youth alienation grew so higher that the number of dropouts increased at an appalling proportion, not to mention the correlated issues such as propensity to substance abuse and teenage pregnancy. The empirical data presented by Dr. Humphrey disclosed some disturbing facts related to the educational infrastructure of the state. In a national scale, Indiana featured right in the bottom as far as access to library books was concerned. It required a rigorous public service campaign to reinstate the importance of reading to preschool kids (Thorson & Moore, 1996, p. 234). The findings from the above survey call for further research initiatives to underpin the primacy of reading. It was made apparent by the U. S. Department of Education researchers that educated parents are generally more adept at guiding their children through proper reading techniques. At the same time, the researches also unearthed that the parents’ financial status matters very little when it comes to reading to the children. Developing the habit of reading in a child from an early age is guaranteed to produce qualitative results in the context of higher education and personality development. So the parents’ role is of noteworthy significance here for furthering children’s education. The thesis topic may be approached now from what some of the earlier educationalists regarded as the linguistic model of elementary education. This model was purported by Comenius and later supported by scholars such as Johann Pestalozzi, Maria Montessori, Friedrich Froebel and John Dewey. The model was designed after the role of language in preschool education. The connection between children’s learning and adult learning was established by a philosophical thread which stressed on the need to overcome sin by reading materials appropriate for children only. This kind of religious approach to learning was central to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Great Britain. However, with the turn of the eighteenth century, many previously held prejudices began disintegrating allowing for the emergence of newer viewpoints on children’s education. The interrelation between imagination and learning was given emphasis in the eighteenth century. Hence, children’s literature was freed from the shackles of religious doctrinism and was viewed as a non-inhibitory medium of self identification (Nuba et al., 1999, pp. 3-5). This evolutionary process hints at the changes that have taken place in the modern day context of reading. Reading activities in elementary schools cover a large part of the study process for young children. The range of topics included in the curricula is worth considering. Now as the children hone on their skills and aptitudes pertaining to reading in schools, it is always better to make them familiarize with similar activities at home, under the guidance of parents. This is a short-spanned process with long-term implications simply because most children, when they step into higher grades, will naturally explore other avenues of learning such as films, sports and so on. So the process of reading to children can only be practiced while they are young and unbeknownst to these other types of entertainment (Thorson & Moore, 1996, p. 234). In order to make young kids aware of the readers’ identity that lie within them, parents need to act proactively well before their kids are introduced to the community-based learning in schools. They have to uniquely identify the basic learning modules that are followed as part of the elementary tools: recognizing the alphabets; structuring simpler to more complex words; and finally to be able to build meaningful sentences. It is worth noticing that all these activities are not based on the informal process of learning mentioned earlier. A child can only learn to recognize alphabets by formal training. Now it does not do any harm if that training is arranged at home by the parents. That way, the necessary skills will be harnessed better for the overall wellbeing of the kid (Pumfrey & Elliott, 1990, pp. 63-64). Let us now concentrate on the act of reading to children. How would go about this task? You’re the parents and your kids spends most of their times with you only. Preschool children find the family environment more congenial to learning than any external surroundings. So the task of reading to your kids, to begin with, is made simpler and more favorable from preparatory perspectives. Here go the complete parental advisories as suggested by Heembrock (2008): What You Can Do The first golden rule of the task is patience. Do not rush things as if you are compelling your kids to follow you and learn what is told. Leave it to your kids to decide what interests them and what does not. The virtue of having patience as a guardian is underscored by the fact that kids are likely to pick up on their chosen area of study skills if they are allowed to take their own time. The second thing you should always remember while reading to your kids is that they are independent and perfectly entitled to be self-willed. Just because you have seen more in life doesn’t make you superior to them, or give you the right to exert your own will upon them. It often happens that while you’re reading to your kids, they do not pay as much attention as you would have liked them to do. Do not get annoyed by this. Instead, just make a polite and loving inquiry as to what they would really like to do. Most of the children would prefer playing to reading. Let them play while you keep on reading. This is a frugal approach in that kids would be picking up occasional words or expressions from your reading while they are still playing or doing what they love most. Also try to read stories that they love to listen to. The precipitations of your reading session will last forever in their pliant minds. Finger tracking the lines in a particular page of a book is of significant help to young children. You have to step into the shoes of your little one and show them how to read each word. When you finger track and your children imitate you, they inadvertently come to know that a page has a beginning at the top and an end at the bottom; and that the lines are to be read from left to right. These are subtle techniques of reading to your kids that go a long way in getting the desired results. Many young learners, after listening to a read section of a book time and again, feel confident of the content. When they begin reading the same section, they start believing that they have acquired a command over it. But in reality, they are just imitating what is read to them. However, in teaching methodologies this phenomenon is known as ‘pretend reading’, which is very important for the beginners. Do not discourage your kids from doing so. It is similar to a child’s maiden attempt to walk. Initially they lose balance and fall repeatedly. But eventually they learn the ways that would help them maintain the body balance and walk successfully. Reading is just the same. Words get ingrained in their brains when they ‘pretend read’, later to be restored from memory when they actually learn to read. Learn when to stop. Do not read at a stretch even if the passage you’re reading has a flow about it. Always follow the reaction of your children while you’re reading. Are they listening to you? Are they able to follow your pace? If not, boost their confidence by asking them to actively take part. After all reading is having fun while learning. As parents, you should always lead by examples. Try to follow the basics of what you read unto your kids. Kids are generally akin to learn from observing their parents and peers. So make them aware of your presence as a role model, as someone they can look up to in life. Always bear in mind that your active and enthusiastic participation in reading will motivate them to read engagingly. Choose a room that has an ambiance for reading. Amass it with newspapers, magazines and journals, and books. If your kids like to watch the National Geographic channel on television, give a thought of getting one of the latest print editions of the same. It will automatically draw them into skimming a few pages (pp. 11-13). It is quite apparent from the above set of advisories that reading to children is a cumulative process that requires thorough attention to the minutest of details. In the preschooling phases, most children lack the necessary exposure to reading as an inseparable ingredient of learning in the broader sense of the term. The problem gets worse with children having reading difficulties. Literature on reading deficits has been built on a dichotomy of problem recognition. First of all, many lack the ability to process information at a rapid clip. The second factor involves the scientific and methodical approach to fix the first one. It is normally found that kids with phonological deficits struggle to read purposefully. Since the main objective is to decipher the written symbols and words, phonological deficits pose a grave threat to reading. Researches have shown that children facing such barriers generally stumble on speed, fluency and understanding of the content being read (Bradley et al., 2002, p. 728). However, it is expected that such problematic scenarios will be resolved in future through more analytical approaches to the thesis topic. References Bradley, R., Danielson, L. C., & Hallahan, D. P. (2002). Identification of learning disabilities: research to practice. Mahwah, New Jersey: Routledge. Compton-Lilly, C. (2003). Reading families: the literate lives of urban children. Amsterdam Avenue, New York: Teachers College Press. Harrison, C. (2004). Understanding reading development. Thousand Oaks, California: SAGE. Heembrock, R. (2008). Why Kids Can’t Spell: A Practical Guide to the Missing Component in Language Proficiency. Lanham, Maryland: R&L Education. Nuba, H., Sheiman, D. L., & Searson, M. (1999). Children’s literature: developing good readers. London: Taylor & Francis. Pumfrey, P. D., & Elliott, C. D. (1990). Children’s difficulties in reading, spelling, and writing: challenges and responses. Bristol, PA: Routledge. Thorson, E., & Moore, J. (1996). Integrated communication: synergy of persuasive voices. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Read More