The Importance of Student Reading
State and national studies show that students’ academic ability increases on standardized test scores when school libraries are staffed by a professional librarian and support staff (adult aides and technology staff) and the book-to-student ratio is at or above the minimum of 15 books per student.
Lance, Keith Curry, Marcis J. Rodney, and Christine Hamilton-Pennell. How School Libraries
Improve Outcomes for Children: The New Mexico Study. Santa Fe.
New Mexico State Library. 2002.
A high school student typically has developed reading skills that can use print as a major source to learn new words.
Paynter, Diane E., Elena Bodrova, and Jane K. Doty. For the Love of Words: Vocabulary Instruction that Works.
San Francisco, Jossey-Bass Teacher. 2005. 17.
“Reading as a form of virtual experience” provides students with descriptions of artifacts, behaviors, events, places, and situations that enhance individual learning. SSR data are described throughout Marzano’s Building Background Knowledge.
Marzano, Robert J. Building Background Knowledge: For Academic Achievement. Alexandria, VA. ASCD. 2004. 36-39.
Reading as little as six minutes a day reduces stress levels by 68% reports, cognitive neuropsychologist Dr. David Lewis. The March 2009 study was conducted at Mindlab International,University of Sussex, England. Psychologists believe this is because the human mind has to concentrate on reading and the distraction of being taken into a literary world eases the tensions in muscles and the heart.
"Reading 'can help reduce stress'". Telegraph Media Group. 02-01-10
Recreational reading improves vocabulary, spelling, grammar, and comprehension - “written language tends to have a higher frequency of complex, uncommon words.”
Heather Booth, Serving Teens through Readers’ Advisory. (Chicago: American Library Association, 2007), 8-9.
Research indicates those individuals who read more are identified as creative, good thinkers, and demonstrating greater levels of cultural literacy.
Stephen D. Krashen, The Power of Reading: Insights from the Research, 2nd 3d.
(Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2006), 26.
“READ READ READ! It does not matter what you read so long as you continue to hone your reading (and comprehension) skills. As your reading improves, you will find it easier to cope with your college coursework. Success on the DAT, MCAT, OAT and other admissions tests depends upon good reading skills.”
“Literature and Medicine,” Health Professionals Advisory Program, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York.
Web page http://hpap.syr.edu/book.htm (Accessed, May 10, 2007).
Dr. Louise Rosenblatt’s literature research describes the theory of reading as a transaction involving the dynamic exchange that exists between the reader and the text; each continuously affecting the other. The reader brings their own feelings, personality, and experiences to the text; each reader is different each time they revisit a particular text. At different points in a reader’s life the language of the text may generate different understanding. Meaning does not reside in the text itself but is made by the reader during the transaction with the text.
Dr. Rosenblatt’s educational background and work experience in anthropology and psychology draw upon the social learning environment present in her developed theory of reading transaction. Of interest -- Dr. Rosenblatt’s anthropology professor was Franz Boas (Barnard) and her roommate was Margaret Mead.
Rosenblatt, Louise M. The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work. Carbondale, IL:
Southern Illinois University Press. 1978.
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