Learn How the ELA-8 Book Drive is Helping Children in Our Community
By Liz Overberg - FF/S
An important aspect of Darlington's mission is serving with respect, and the ELA-8 division of our school offers opportunities for students to participate in service projects throughout the year.
Right now, for their second big service project of the year, the ELA-8 students are collecting new and used books for local organizations and schools.
This book drive will provide books to students in our community who may not otherwise have access to books. Studies show that regular access to print materials:
- Improves children’s reading performance.
- Is instrumental in helping children to learn the basics of reading (like letter and word identification, phonemic awareness, and sentence completion).
- Causes children to read more and for longer lengths of time.
- Improves children’s attitude toward reading.
Children’s literacy is so vital that, in 2014, the American Academy of Pediatrics called literacy an “essential component of pediatric care.” They issued a statement encouraging doctors to promote reading because of its extensive health benefits. Children who are read to during their early childhood have:
- Better language skills.
- A higher interest in reading.
- A bond with a reading adult that promotes cognitive, language, and social-emotional development.
Studies have shown that proficient readers are not only more likely to be successful in school, but are also more likely to be successful throughout their lives:
During our morning flagpole gathering on Friday, I spoke with the 3rd-8th grade students about some of the specific ways that not knowing how to read could make life difficult:
- Many people rely on the written word for news, especially if TV or Internet are cost-prohibitive. Without the ability to read, it might be hard to know what's going on in the world.
- Some jobs require an ability to read and write. An illiterate person might have trouble finding employment.
- In some states, a written exam is a barrier to receiving a driver's license.
- It would be difficult to navigate the Internet without the ability to read or write.
- In legal matters, an illiterate person would not be able to read forms by himself. Legal documents can affect a person's personal and professional life in countless ways.
- A lot of learning (at all levels) is based on information in textbooks. For a student without easy access to alternative sources of information, it would be difficult to learn new content.
- A basic ability to read street signs and maps helps a person to navigate the world.
This list helped students to understand on a more concrete level why it is vital for every child to have access to books and to learn how to read as a young child.
Unfortunately, research tells us that low-income families in the United States, and even here in Floyd County, are much less likely to have age-appropriate books for children in the home, and the average child growing up in a low-income family has not been exposed to as much one-to-one picture book reading as children from higher income homes.
Experts have found that children need to hear 1,000 stories read to them before they can really begin to read on their own, and that repetition of stories helps children to learn new words and to make connections between the words they hear read out loud and the words on the page.
In its 2014 “Kids & Family Reading Report,” published just this month, Scholastic reported that, if children are read to five to seven days a week before they enter kindergarten, they are much more likely to be frequent independent readers from ages 6-11. They also reported that children ages 12-17 who live in a home that owns more than 150 print books are more likely to read regularly than those teens who do not have access to books at home.
Thank you to those members of our community who have supported Darlington’s ELA-8 book drive. Together we are helping to give all of the children in our community a chance at literacy.
Sources:
"Access to Print Materials Improves Children's Reading: A Meta-Analysis of 108 Most Relevant Studies Shows Positive Impacts." Reading Is Fundamental. Learning Point Associates, 2010. Web. 15 Jan. 2015. <www.rif.org/documents/us/RIDandLearningPointMeta-OnePager.pdf>.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation. “Double Jeopardy: How Third Grade Reading Skills and Poverty Influence High School Graduation.” Baltimore: The Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2012. Web. 15 Jan. 2015. <https://www.aecf.org/m/resourcedoc/AECF-DoubleJeopardy-2012-Full.pdf>.
"Basic Reading Skills and the Literacy of America's Least Literate Adults: Results from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) Supplemental Studies." National Center for Education Statistics. U.S. Department of Education, Feb. 2009. Web. 15 Jan. 2015. <nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009481.pdf>.
"The Health Literacy of America's Adults: Results from the 2003 National Assessment of Adult Literacy." National Center for Education Statistics. U.S. Department of Education, Sept. 2006. Web. 15 Jan. 2015. <nces.ed.gov/pubs2006/2006483.pdf>.
"Kids & Family Reading Report." Scholastic. Scholastic, 2014. Web. 15 Jan. 2015. <https://www.scholastic.com/readingreport/Scholastic-KidsAndFamilyReadingReport-5thEdition.pdf?v=100>.
Kropp, Lisa G. "Goal: 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten." School Library Journal. School Library Journal, 16 Jan. 2014. Web. 15 Jan. 2015. <https://www.slj.com/2014/01/standards/early-learning/vivacious-vocabulary-turning-little-ones-into-strong-readers-first-steps/>.
O'Keefe, Lori. "Parents Who Read to Their Children Nurture More than Literary Skills." AAP News. American Academy of Pediatrics, 2014. Web. 15 Jan. 2015. <https://aapnews.aappublications.org/content/early/2014/06/24/aapnews.20140624-2>.
"Research." Children's Literacy Foundation. CLIF, 2015. Web. 01 Jan. 2015. <clifonline.org/resources/research/>.
"Why Does Education Matter So Much to Health." Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Mar. 2013. Web. 15 Jan. 2015. <https://www.rwjf.org/content/dam/farm/reports/issue_briefs/2012/rwjf403347>.
