Cunningham & Stanovich

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debbie
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Cunningham & Stanovich

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Here's a great article about the hugely important effects of getting children reading early and well:
WHAT READING DOES FOR THE MIND

BY ANNE E. CUNNINGHAM AND KEITH E. STANOVICH


AMERICAN EDUCATOR/AMERICAN FEDERATION OF TEACHERS SPRING/SUMMER 1998
http://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/ ... ingham.pdf
A positive dimension of our research is that all of our studies have demonstrated that reading yields significant dividends for everyone—not just for the “smart kids” or the more able readers. Even the child with limited reading and comprehension skills will build vocabulary and cognitive structures through reading.

We can thus elicit two crucial messages from our research findings. First, it is difficult to overstate the importance of getting children off to an early successful start in reading. We must ensure that students’ decoding and word recognition abilities are progressing solidly.Those who read well are likely to read more, thus setting an upward spiral into motion.

Second, we should provide all children, regardless of their achievement levels, with as many reading experiences as possible. Indeed, this becomes doubly imperative for precisely those children whose verbal abilities are most in need of bolstering, for it is the very act of reading that can build those capacities. An encouraging message for teachers of low-achieving students is implicit here.We often despair of changing our students’ abilities, but there is at least one partially malleable habit that will itself develop abilities—reading!
Debbie Hepplewhite
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