The Surprising Thing Kids Need to Become Strong Readers

So many recent debates around reading have revolved around how much schools need to teach phonics. Kids aren’t learning to read, the articles argue.

They need phonics and an explicit approach. Teachers need to follow the science of reading, which has been well-established for decades but often ignored. Recently, New York City elementary schools are requiring schools to teach phonics using one of three curricula.

And while these shifts are an important part of remedying the trouble with reading, it’s only part of the story. Focusing only on phonics leaves too many important elements out.

To many outsiders—and even to many teachers—reading is all about decoding. It’s true: If children cannot make sense of the words on the page, they will not be able to gain understanding from the text.

Teaching them to decode the words is key. But as adults, we don’t read to decode. We don’t read only to comprehend—although of course, we want to understand what we read. Instead, we read to grow as a person. To have our thoughts and beliefs challenged or affirmed.

To gain information, yes, but more deeply, to know what it is like to be outside of our own minds and bodies. If we keep teaching reading as about decoding or even about comprehension, we are missing that key element.

Instead, we need to focus on teaching those skills alongside having great conversations about what kids are reading. Only that way will kids see the purpose of reading and engage with it as a tool of inspiration and empowerment.

See books as jumpstarts

Children need to understand that books are more than books. They’re jumpstarts for making sense of the world—and making a change in the world. They can be invitations and provocations. They can challenge kids to rethink what they thought they knew. They can offer deep experiences of empathy, allowing kids to dive into another’s heart and mind.

But—the key point we’re often missing—books cannot do this on their own. In order for children to benefit from the text they are taking in, there needs to be a before and after. There needs, that is, to be a conversation linking everyday experiences to the books, and books to everyday experiences.

In the words of the theorist Paolo Freire: “Reading the world always precedes reading the word, and reading the word implies continually reading the world.” That is, reading is an experience and is informed by experiences. No child comes to reading in a vacuum.

Prior experiences—and conversations about those experiences—matter, and have the chance to dramatically alter their interest and motivation in reading, and even their reading skills. Say children are reading a book about the Northern Lights. They may come to the book eagerly, having just experienced the Northern Lights the previous evening. Or they may come with no information at all.

Kids who read poorly especially need conversations

This difference plays a key role in how motivated they feel to read, how well they read, and how much meaning they make from the text.

In what’s called the Matthew effect, after the aphorism, “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer,” children who enjoy reading are likely to read more and gain more skills, while those who start out poorer readers often shy away from it and read less.

If we don’t support those especially who are poorer at the start, we risk having them turn away from reading entirely. Not learning to read well has lifelong impacts on all areas of life, including poorer physical and mental health1 and even reduced longevity.2

Great conversations expand on what children think

So what can these conversations sound like? They start with what reading researchers call “text to self,” “text to world,” and “text to text” connections. These connections are ways of helping children link what they are reading to their own experiences, the broader society, and other books they have read.

For example, a child may answer a question such as, “When in your life did you feel like the main character in the book? (text to self), or “What events in history do you think of when you read this book?” (text to world), or “What other books does this book remind you of, and why?” (text to text).

Making these connections is important, as it lets kids see how books are building on other books, with ideas that link to or challenge each other, and how they relate to events in their own lives or in the past. Yet these connections are only the start.

Instead of one-time connections, we need to help kids engage in everyday dialogue about the ideas and characters they encounter in books.

To do so, we can stop in the midst of reading and prompt them to ask their own questions, not simply answer ours. We know that dialogic reading, a process that involves this back-and-forth, can dramatically build young children’s reading skills, as compared to a traditional approach.

In this process, the adult prompts a child to talk about the book, expands on what the child is saying, helps evaluate the response, and then repeats the prompt to help the child learn from it.

For older children, a similar process can work, and even more flexibly. We can read aloud with kids, or have them read aloud, then stop and wonder aloud about what they are reading.

Everyday dialogue lets kids wonder aloud

For example, a child might wonder: “How is the child going to get out of this situation?” or make a prediction, such as, “I bet he’s going to have to swim.” We can have a conversation about this wondering, adding our own thoughts and ideas, and having an ongoing commentary.

Think about being in a movie theater and commenting on the way the movie plays out—not constantly, but regularly enough that we have a sense of how the other person feels about the plot. In this way, we can see reading as much more of a back-and-forth, not as a text that needs a filled-out worksheet as a response.

Why do kids need this approach? It’s one of the key ways to ensure that reading is a meaningful experience for them, not just a skill-building one. It moves beyond our efficiency-oriented system, where we may teach reading for reading’s sake, and where kids get the idea that “reading well” means “reading fast.”

In this way, we can help our kids learn from books, whether or not they are “good decoders.” We can help them learn what books were intended to do—to connect us, to spark ideas, to inspire—and show them how reading can be a meaning-making experience, not a chore.