Why Reading Aloud is Enough

I can’t write about anything else until I write about the one thing that I feel like has been the most powerful and influential activity for our family - reading aloud.

Reading aloud is something I love and I always knew it was important, but I never really stopped to analyze exactly why. When I found Sarah Makenzie, author of The Read Aloud Family and Teaching from Rest (a separate post is coming on her, her website, podcast, and these amazing books!) I finally found the support I needed.

There are a multitude of reasons and gobs of research to support why reading aloud is so powerful, but today I just want to focus on one little phrase that Sarah Makenzie says often and is now ingrained in my head- grammatically correct sophisticated language patterns.

When I heard that, something finally clicked. Yes! That’s it! That’s why reading aloud is so powerful- we are literally filling our kids’ brains with language that will not only help them increase their vocabularies but also provide the very building blocks they need to express themselves through speaking and writing.

Picture books are purposefully written to contain beautiful, rich language that children cannot read on their own because the stories are meant to be read aloud to them. When we read aloud and they listen with their ears, that language is being inputted into their brains and they hear language as it’s meant to be expressed. When we speak conversationally, we don’t always use proper grammar and we don’t always use the most sophisticated language (well, at least that’s true for me, but I’m working on it!).

I used to have the idea that any book was a good book. I still believe that to be mostly true for kids who are capable of reading on their own but who haven't fallen in love with reading yet, but for books I choose to read aloud to my kids I feel very differently. Now, I look for books much more intentionally and choose to read aloud the ones that provide those rich language experiences and more sophisticated vocabulary.

Just listen to the language on this one page of one of our favorite books from author and illustrator Chris Van Dusen (an entire post will be dedicated to him very soon. We LOVE him!):

That night before he went to sleep,

Randy scanned the sky,

and through his Space Boy telescope

a glimmer caught his eye.

He fiddled with the focus

till he saw it crystal clear;

it was a massive fireball,

and it was coming near!

Alarmed, he started plotting

the projection of its path.

he formulated diagrams

he double-checked his math.

He calculated quickly

and concluded with a frown:

in nineteen days, the fireball

would crash into his town!

This isn’t the best example of what I would call “beautiful” language, but holy cow! Those words! Plotting, projection, formulated, calculated, glimmer--these are words that I most likely wouldn’t be saying in the course of a normal day.

And what’s amazing to me is that Cooper, my almost three year old, absolutely loves this book and asks to read it every single day. That language is seeping into his brain and eventually will come out of his mouth. So cool.

What I also didn’t realize is how important reading aloud is for kids who can already read independently is. But it is so important- and for the same reason!

When kids graduate to reading on their own we want them to feel confident and successful, so the language is often simplified for readability. This is great for them to gain confidence and fluency, but not so great when we are thinking about those sophisticated language patterns and higher-level vocabulary.

Sarah argues, and I now whole-heartedly agree, that reading aloud to kids who can read on their own is equally if not MORE important than reading to our non-readers! The more a child is read to, the more those grammatically correct sophisticated language patterns are embedded in their brains, the easier speaking and writing will be for them. On her website, Sarah Makenzie has provided lots of book lists for kids of all ages and she also discusses this topic on her podcast in this episode.

So, this little phrase- grammatically correct sophisticated language patterns is reason enough to for me to believe that if we do nothing else in the course of our "school" day, that reading aloud is enough.

There are so many more reasons why reading aloud is powerful and I’ll be back soon (not going to hold myself to any sort of timeline these days! Ha!) to share more about what I'm learning!

What books are you reading aloud to your kiddos this week? I’d love for you to share in the comments!