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Reading and Baseball: Practice Makes a BIG Difference!

Imagine a child who practices batting and pitching a ball to his dad an hour every day all summer, from the time the child is three until he is eight. (May, June, July, August = 120 hours a year for 5 years)

Imagine a second child – no practice, no training, has never slipped his hand into a baseball glove, has never run the bases, has never swung a bat, has almost never seen a full game played.

Imagine that they turn out the same day for Little League try-outs.

The skill level between these two young ball players is like the skill level in reading readiness of our incoming kindergartners. The average child in an affluent school comes to kindergarten with a thousand hours of literacy experience. The average child in a non-affluent school may come with as few as twenty-five hours of literacy experience. Academic performance can be significantly improved by increasing children’s pre-kindergarten literacy experience regardless of their socioeconomic status.

Credit: Davies County Public Schools

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Correct Practice Makes an Even BIGGER Difference! Written by Carol Payne, Literacy Specialist at Dixie Elementary Magnet School

While the time we spend reading with our children is VERY important, what we do during that time is important as well.

Here are a few tips:

1. Read TO your child.  Spend time reading books above your child's reading level to your child. Your main purpose in doing so is to expand your child's comprehension of vocabulary and conceptual knowledge. 

2. Read WITH your child.  Spend time reading books on or slightly above your child's reading level WITH your child.  You might PARTNER read.  Your child reads one page and you read another or your read a more difficult section and your child reads an easier section.

3. Listen as your child reads to you.  Spend time listening as your child reads books at his/her independent reading level (i.e., below his/her instructional level assessed by the DRA-2) to you.  This especially important for the beginning reader.

a. Be sure your child is reading appropriate books, especially if s/he is a beginning reader or is reading below grade-level.  The "Goldilocks Principle" holds true here.  Children benefit the most when they read books not too easy, not too hard, but "just right."  When books are too easy, children are not learning as much as they are capable of learning; when books are too hard, children become frustrated and their positive reading strategies break down.  Ask your child's teacher, "What is my child's reading level?" "Please show me what a book like this looks like."

b. Once you know your child's approximate reading level, you can refer to a leveled book list to find books appropriate for your child. 

c. In general, pause at least three seconds to see if your child can figure the word before offering help.  Try to avoid telling your child a word, but encourage him/her to use reading strategies (such as making the beginning sound, breaking it up, rereading, looking at the picture.  If this doesn't work, tell your child the word.

d. Be sure to offer SPECIFIC PRAISE of your child's reading (i.e., great job rereading that sentence when it didn't make sense)!  

4. Whether you or your child are reading the book, try to discuss or write about the book.  For ideas, see Bloom's Taxonomy of Question Starters below, contributed from the Daviess County Schools website.