The article Every Child, Every Day, authors Richard Allington and Rachael Gabriel explore six elements of reading instruction which don’t require much time or money – just educators’ deciding to put them in place.This 2012 article is still relevant today, especially during these resource constrained times. Here are a few key points that really resonate with us:
- Let students choose what to read.
“Research has demonstrated that access to self-selected text improves students’ reading performance (Krashen, 2001), whereas no evidence indicates that workbooks, photocopies, or computer tutorial programs have ever done so (Cunningham & Stanovich 1998; Dynarski 2007). - Let students talk about their reading.
Nystrand (2006) reviewed the research on engaging students in literate conversations and noted that even small amounts of such conversation (10 minutes a day) improved standardized test scores, regardless of students’ family background or reading level. - Let students hear lots of read alouds.
“Listening to an adult model fluent reading increases students’ own fluency and comprehension skills (Trelease, 2011), as well as expanding their vocabulary, background knowledge, sense of story, awareness of genre and text structure, and comprehension of the texts read (Wu & Samuels, 2004).
Read the full article here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265739450_Every_Child_Every_Day