Sent to the Tampa Bay Times, July 1, 2013.
Pinellas' summer program ("Summer Bridge
schooling kicks off in Pinellas County," June 29) is doing it the the hard way: More classroom
instruction in reading is not nearly as effective as encouraging free voluntary
self-selected reading.
The
first study of the summer slump, done 1975 by Barbara Heyns, showed that the
difference in reading development between children from low and middle incomes
is largely the result of lack of access to reading material over the summer.
Heyns found that those who live closer to libraries read more, and both Hayns
and Harvard scholar Jimmy Kim, 30 years later, found that children who read
more over the summer made more gains in reading.
Also,
Fay Shin and I reported that 6th graders behind in reading who participated in
a summer program focusing on self-selected reading and plenty of library time
made dramatic gains in reading.
All
this agrees with mountains of research showing that extensive reading for
pleasure is far more effective than traditional classroom instruction in
reading for boosting reading proficiency, as well as studies showing that
better libraries mean higher reading proficiency.
Stephen Krashen
Sources:
Summer reading: Heyns, Barbara. 1975. Summer
Learning and the Effect of School. New York: Academic Press; Kim, Jimmy.
2003. “Summer reading and the ethnic achievement gap,” Journal of Education
for Students Placed at Risk 9, no. 2:169-188; Shin, F. and Krashen, S.
2007. Summer Reading: Program and Evidence. New York: Allyn and Bacon.
Reading for pleasure and libraries: Krashen, S. 2004. The Power of Reading. Portsmouth, NH:
Heinemann, and Westport, CONN: Libraries Unlimited (second edition). Krashen,
S. 2011. Free Voluntary Reading. Westport: Libraries Unlimited. Krashen, S.,
Lee, SY., and McQuillan, J. 2012. Is the library important? Multivariate
studies at the national and international level. Journal of Language and
Literacy Education, 8(1): 26-36. Lance, Keith. The Impact of School Libraries
on Student Achievement. http://www.lrs.org/impact.php
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