How Much Should 4th Graders Read Independently

This is the 2d entry in the Education Leader's Guide to Reading Growth, a 7-part series about the human relationship between reading practice, reading growth, and overall educatee achievement.

In our last post, nosotros examined how reading practice characteristics differ between persistently struggling students and students who outset out struggling only end up succeeding—and how strong reading skills are linked to loftier school graduation rates and higher enrollment rates.

However, it's not but struggling readers who could benefit from more reading practice. A written report of the reading practices of more than ix.ix million students over the 2015–2016 school year constitute that more than one-half of the students read less than 15 minutes per day on average.^ane

Fewer than 1 in 5 students averaged a half-hour or more of reading per 24-hour interval, and fewer than one in three read between 15 and 29 minutes on a daily ground.

The trouble is that fifteen minutes seems to be the "magic number" at which students first seeing substantial positive gains in reading achievement, yet less than half of our students are reading for that amount of fourth dimension.

xv minutes seems to exist the "magic number" at which students start seeing substantial positive gains in reading achievement; students who read just over a one-half-hour to an hour per day see the greatest gains of all.

An analysis comparison the engaged reading time and reading scores of more than 2.2 one thousand thousand students found that students who read less than five minutes per day saw the lowest levels of growth, well beneath the national average.² Even students who read 5–fourteen minutes per mean solar day saw sluggish gains that were beneath the national average.

Only students who read 15 minutes or more a day saw accelerated reading gains—that is, gains higher than the national average—and students who read just over a half-hr to an hour per 24-hour interval saw the greatest gains of all.

Although many other factors—such as quality of instruction, equitable access to reading materials, and family background—also play a part in achievement, the consistent connection between fourth dimension spent reading per twenty-four hours and reading growth cannot be ignored.

Moreover, if reading practice is linked to reading growth and achievement, then information technology follows that low levels of reading practice should correlate to low levels of reading performance and high levels of reading practice should connect to high levels of reading performance. This pattern is precisely what we run across in educatee exam data.

Potent connections between reading do and accomplishment

An assay of more than 174,000 students' Program for International Educatee Assessment (PISA) scores revealed that connection between reading engagement and reading performance was "moderately potent and meaningful" in all 32 countries examined, including the Usa.³ On average, students who spent more fourth dimension reading, read more various texts, and saw reading as a valuable activity scored college on the PISA's combined reading literacy scale.

The study besides found a educatee's level of reading engagement was more highly correlated with their reading accomplishment than their socioeconomic status, gender, family unit structure, or time spent on homework. In fact, students with the lowest socioeconomic background but loftier reading engagement scored better than students with the highest socioeconomic background but depression reading appointment.

Overall, students with high reading engagement scored significantly above the international boilerplate on the combined reading literacy scale, regardless of their family background. The reverse was also true, with students with low reading appointment scoring significantly beneath the international average, no matter their socioeconomic status.

The authors suggested that reading practice can play an "important role" in closing accomplishment gaps between dissimilar socioeconomic groups. Frequent high-quality reading exercise may help children compensate for—and even overcome—the challenges of being socially or economically disadvantaged, while a lack of reading practise may erase or potentially opposite the advantages of a more privileged background. In short, reading practise matters for kids from all walks of life.

For students inside the United states of america, reading practice may not simply be more of import than socioeconomic status—it may also be more important than many school factors.

Looking at only American students' PISA scores, we come across that reading appointment had a college correlation with reading literacy achievement than fourth dimension spent on homework, relationships with teachers, a sense of belonging, classroom environs, or fifty-fifty pressure to achieve (which had a negative correlation). In addition, a regression assay showed achievement went upward beyond all measures of reading literacy performance when reading engagement increased.

Although the PISA only assesses 15-twelvemonth-olds, like patterns can exist seen in both younger and older American students. In 2013, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) compared students' National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading scores with their reading habits.⁴ For all age groups, they institute a clear correlation between the frequency with which students read for fun and their average NAEP scores: The more frequently students read, the higher their scores were.

What is peculiarly interesting about the NAEP results is that the correlation between reading frequency and reading scores was true for all historic period groups and the score gaps increased across the years. Among nine-year-olds, there was just an 18-point departure betwixt children who reported reading "never or hardly ever" and those who read "almost every day." By historic period 13, the gap widened to 27 points. At age 17, it further increased to 30 points.

This seems to run contrary to the ordinarily held wisdom that reading practice is most important when children are learning how to read but less essential one time fundamental reading skills have been acquired. Indeed, nosotros might even hypothesize the opposite—that reading practice may abound more than important as students motility from course to course and encounter more challenging reading tasks. Until more research either confirms or disproves this possible explanation, it is nothing more than than a approximate, but an interesting 1 to consider notwithstanding.

However, what is clear is that reading exercise is decreasing amidst all age groups, with the most dramatic decreases among the very students who may need it the well-nigh.

Troubling declines in reading practice

Over the last three decades, reading rates have dramatically declined in the United States. In 1984, NAEP results showed the vast majority of 9-year-olds read for fun once or more per calendar week, with more than one-half reporting reading near every day. Only one in five reported reading ii or fewer times per month. By 2012, 25% of all nine-yr-olds were reading for pleasure fewer than 25 days per twelvemonth.⁵

For older students, the drop is even more precipitous. In 1984, 35% of 13-yr-olds read for fun almost every day, and another 35% read 1 or two times per calendar week—in full, more two-thirds of 13-year-olds reported reading at least one time a week. In 2012, nearly one-half read less than once a week.

Among 17-year-olds, the percentage reading nearly every day dropped from 31% in 1984 to simply 19% in 2012, while the percent who read for fun less than in one case a calendar week rose from 36% to 61%. The number of 17-year-olds reporting reading "never or hardly ever" really tripled.

And the decline in reading is non due to students spending more fourth dimension on homework in 2012 than in 1984. During the same time period, the percentage of students who reported spending more than an hour on homework actually declined.

In 1984, xix% of 9-year-olds, 38% of thirteen-yr-olds, and 40% of 17-year-olds reported spending an hr or more than on homework the day prior to the NAEP. In 2012, those numbers had dropped to 17% for 9-year-olds, 30% for 13-year-olds, and 36% for 17-twelvemonth-olds.

Why are we seeing the greatest gaps and the greatest declines in the oldest students? Although many unlike factors are likely at play, one of them might be that the effects of reading practice are cumulative over a educatee's schooling, particularly when it comes to vocabulary.

The long-term furnishings of reading exercise

What'due south the divergence betwixt kids who read more 30 minutes per day and those who read less than 15 minutes per day?

Twelve million.

Between kindergarten and twelfth grade, students with an average daily reading time of 30+ minutes are projected to encounter 13.seven million words. At graduation, their peers who averaged less than 15 minutes of reading per twenty-four hours are likely to be exposed to but 1.five 1000000 words. The difference is more than 12 one thousand thousand words. Children in between, who read fifteen–29 minutes per day, will encounter an boilerplate of 5.7 1000000 words—less than half of the loftier-reading group simply well-nigh four times that of the low-reading group.¹

Some researchers estimate students learn i new word of vocabulary for every one thousand words read.⁶ Using this ratio, a student who reads merely 1.5 meg words would larn only 1,500 new vocabulary words from reading, while a educatee who reads 13.7 million words would learn 13,700 new vocabulary terms—more than ix times the corporeality of vocabulary growth.

This is peculiarly important when we consider that students can learn far more than words from reading than from direct instruction: Even an aggressive schedule of 20 new words taught each calendar week will consequence in only 520 new words past the end of the typical 36-week school year. This does not mean that reading do is "meliorate" than direct instruction for building vocabulary—direction instruction is central, but teachers can only do so much of information technology. Instead, we ask educators to imagine the potential for vocabulary growth if direct instruction, structural analysis strategies, and reading practice are all used to reinforce ane another.

Vocabulary plays a critical role in reading accomplishment. Research has shown that more than than one-half the variance in students' reading comprehension scores tin be explained by the depth and latitude of their vocabulary cognition—and these two vocabulary factors can even be used to predict a student's reading functioning.⁷

Nosotros can see the relationship between vocabulary and reading achievement conspicuously in NAEP scores, where the students who had the highest average vocabulary scores were the students performing in the meridian quarter (to a higher place the 75th percentile) of reading comprehension. Similarly, students with the lowest vocabulary scores were those who were in the bottom quarter (at or below the 25th percentile) in reading comprehension.⁸ This ways those boosted 12 million words could potentially accept a huge impact on student success.

So what are we to exercise, when reading practice is then clearly connected to both vocabulary exposure and reading achievement, but non plenty students are getting enough reading practice to bulldoze substantial growth?

The reply seems articulate. We need to make increasing reading practice a top priority for all students in all schools. Making reading practice a system-broad objective may be one of the most of import things we tin do for our students' long-term outcomes, particularly when we combine it with high-quality instruction and effective reading curricula. It is time to put every bit much focus on reading practice as we do on school civilisation, student-educator relationships, and socioeconomic factors.

Withal, non all reading exercise is built the same. Quantity matters, but so does quality. In the next post in this serial, we explore how yous can ensure your students are getting the nigh out of every minute of reading practice.

To read the side by side postal service in this series, click the banner below.

References

^ane Renaissance Learning. (2016). What kids are reading: And how they abound. Wisconsin Rapids, WI: Author.
² Renaissance Learning. (2015). The research foundation for Accelerated Reader 360. Wisconsin Rapids, WI: Author.
³ Kirsch, I., de Jong, J., Lafontaine, D., McQueen, J., Mendelovits, J., & Monseur, C. (2002). Reading for change: Performance and engagement across countries: Results from PISA 2000. Paris, France: Organization for Economic Co-performance and Evolution (OECD).
^four National Center for Teaching Statistics. (2013). The nation'southward written report menu: Trends in bookish progress 2012 (NCES 2013 456). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Teaching Institute of Didactics Sciences.
⁵ National Center for Education Statistics. (2013). Table 221.30: Average National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading scale score and percentage distribution of students, past age, amount of reading for school and for fun, and fourth dimension spent on homework and watching Boob tube/video: Selected years, 1984 through 2012. Digest of Education Statistics. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education Institute of Educational activity Sciences. Retrieved from: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d15/tables/dt15_221.xxx.asp
^half-dozen Mason, J.One thousand., Stahl, Southward. A. , Au, K. H. , & Herman, P. A. (2003). Reading: Children's developing knowledge of words. In J. Flood, D. Lapp, J. R. Squire, & J. Chiliad. Jensen (Eds.), Handbook of research on teaching the English language arts (2nd ed., pp. 914-930). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Assembly.
⁷ Qian, D. D. (2002). Investigating the Human relationship Between Vocabulary Knowledge and Academic Reading Performance: An Assessment Perspective. Language Learning, 52(3), 513-536.
⁸ National Center for Education Statistics. (2013). 2013 Vocabulary report. 2013 Reading cess. Washington, DC: U.South. Department of Education Found of Education Sciences.

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