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Reading by Children |
Seminal research:
Elley and Mangubhai found reading significantly increased the reading achievement of children. They studied 614 children (380 in the experimental groups and 234 in the control group) in 4th and 5th grade classrooms in rural Fijian schools with very few books. The researchers provided 250 high-interest, illustrated story books in English per classroom to the experimental groups. The control group continued to use the on-going English language program that put little emphasis on reading. Eight of the 16 experimental classrooms had sustained silent reading (time set aside in class for children to read books of their choice). The other 8 experimental classrooms had the Shared Book Experience (also called shared reading, a teaching technique where the teacher points to the print in full view of the children while reading to the children). They found that after eight months, the pupils in the two experimental groups progressed in reading comprehension at twice the rate of the comparison group (p<.001).
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Replication research:
They found among all the ways children spend their time, reading books was the best predictor of several measures of reading achievement, including gains in reading achievement between second and fifth grade. They also found that the teacher has a significant influence on the amount of book reading children do outside of school. The class that read the most averaged 16.5 minutes per day, whereas the class that read the least averaged 4.1 minutes per day.
They found that the amount of time spent reading during reading period in school contributed significantly to gains in students' reading achievement as measured by reading comprehension scores on the Gates-MacGinitie Reading Test (p<.039) while time spent reading at home approached significance (p<.068).
The NAEP found that students who read for fun almost every day outside of school scored higher on the NAEP assessment of reading achievement than children who read for fun only once or twice a week, who in turn outscored children who read for fun outside of school only once or twice a month, who in turn, outscored children who hardly ever or never read for fun outside of school (p. 38).
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