This week, the Minister of Education, Bernard Drainville, announced that his ministry is launching a campaign inviting people to develop children’s reading habits.
This campaign obviously aims to encourage reading at school. But one of its aspects concerns reading at home, reading with toddlers, and therefore before entering school and before learning to read.
However, when it comes to learning to read, credible research tells us, reading with toddlers is immensely useful and important. A famous report from 1984 said this, which could not be more current: “Reading aloud is the most important activity for developing the knowledge necessary to learn to read. This is especially true in the years before starting school. »
At a time when we learned that more than a quarter of fourth grade students failed the ministerial reading test, this program could not have come at a better time.
The ministry’s web page which presents this campaign is well done and full of valuable information and excellent practical advice for reading with your little ones.
I would like to recall four ideas on this subject that are particularly dear to me.
Prior knowledge
Remember that crucial idea of working memory and the prior knowledge needed to overcome its limitations?
Perhaps the greatest benefit of reading to a child is that it helps them acquire such knowledge, which happens by giving them lots of information about the world and enriching their vocabulary. This will be immensely helpful to him in learning to read at school.
The short text to read at school talks about chimpanzees, the jungle, lianas and Africa? Students are stuck. Not him. He knows: thanks to Tarzan ! The child in the story to be read is brainless, likes riddles, knows that the moon lights up, and that prices are sometimes astronomical? Students are still stuck. Not her. She encountered all these words in a meaningful and attractive context. thanks to The Moon Operaby Prévert.
No screen and a ritual
The second idea I want to put forward is that reading should be done in books, not on screens. It is undoubtedly not easy, but it is essential, today more than ever.
My third idea concerns ways to achieve this, and to make reading a kind of ritual, which comes back constantly, which is interactive and fun. The ministry website cited above is very well done on this subject (as on the others…).
Here are some of the strategies suggested. Have your child handle books (e.g.: cardboard albums, magazines); invent stories for your child and allow them to participate in this creation; read different content to him (e.g.: text on the cereal box, name of a street, birthday card) and read in different places (e.g.: at the library, in the yard, at the beach); go to the library and help your child choose books that suit their tastes and are adapted to their reading level; set up a reading corner at home; tell your child that reading can allow him to entertain himself, to obtain information, to communicate with others, to express himself, to learn, to understand how to do something, etc.
My last idea goes in this direction. This is because reading, in addition to everything that has just been rightly recalled, is also a source of pleasures, particular, inimitable pleasures that we can only enjoy if they have been offered to us, offered, given a taste. Once this is done, they are likely to become indispensable and accompany you throughout your life. Introducing these pleasures to a child is one of the possible effects of reading books to them.
But also, unfortunately…
I cannot ignore the fact that there are also formidable and very sad inequalities on this subject which come into play even before arriving at school. Here are families where there are almost no books, there are parents who do not know how to read. Schools must do everything to combat these inequalities and ensure real equality of opportunity.
Using the best methods to learn to read is an essential component of this work. What about it? I will come back to it.
In the meantime, there are all these libraries which offer reading sessions for children (often called “Story Time”) and the Literacy Foundation, which works to support children and adults in the development and maintaining their ability to read and learn. The government has just recognized its work with a Quebec Volunteer Hommage award, Organization category. Well done !
Doctor of philosophy, doctor of education and columnist, Normand Baillargeon wrote, directed or translated and edited more than seventy works.