Reading Magic by Mem Fox has a good benefits to the children, in a way that reading aloud to the children in their early stage develops the ability of the child to learn how to read. And this somewhat related to Emergent Literacy and emergent literacy is based on the assumption that a child acquires some knowledge about language, reading and writing even before attending any formal education. Developmental reading deals with theories of childs early stage of learning, his progress to fluency in oral language, reading and writing and the transfer of his home literacy to school literacy.
Reading aloud has such a powerful impact to the ability of the child to learn and to read. Through this, children learn to read and write. By doing this activity, the child would learn to read without being taught. The first literacy is created by the emotional sparks between a child, and a book.
The foundations of learning to read are set down from the moment a child first hears the sound of people talking, the tones of songs, and the rhythms, repetitions of rhymes and stories. Reading aloud to children early in life also rapidly develops their speaking skills.
The best time to read aloud to a baby is the day it is born. Not doing so will lead them not settling down for a book. On the other hand, the right time of the day is whenever possible and as often as possible. Although these read aloud sessions can happen anytime, it is best to do it before bedtime. There is no exact right way of reading aloud, other than to try to be as expressive as possible. But reading aloud is in fact an art form in which the eyes and voice play important parts.
It is important to point out the significance of the illustrations in books for young children for the pictures tell a thousand words and help unlock the action of the story. It is important for children to be able to identify the most basic sounds of the letters of the alphabet as well. And one way of doing it is encouraging them to try to write even when it’s only scribble, because trying to write is one of the fastest ways children teach themselves to read.
Reading is not all about being able to pronounce the words correctly but being able to make sense from the marks on the page, or making the print mean something. This is the first secret of reading. It is getting the message and comprehending. We can imprint a print by reading aloud to children even babies, by doing this, they will begin to understand and get the message from print.
If a person wants to read a language, it is necessary first to understand the language. The more we know about a language, the easier it is to read. We can increase children’s language experiences by chatting to them, providing them songs and rhythm because from these things they learn words, sentences, rhythm, rhyme, and repetition, all of which they’ll find later in the books they read. According to experts in literacy and child development, rhymes will be readers. It is important with younger children to repeat the same lively stories over and over again so the book language looses its strangeness and becomes familiar. Knowing as much as language as possible is the second secret of reading.
The third secret of reading is our general knowledge, the more we know about life, the universe and everything , the easier it is to read. We can provide a great deal of information by the act of reading. When we read aloud to young children, they gain a vast amount of general knowledge. Understanding print, understanding language, and understanding how the world works, when these three secrets of reading come together, it is like inseparable friends, one assists the others.
When a child experience difficulty in learning to read at school, our first impulse is to blame the child and that’s unfair. There is a group of puzzling children who don’t want to learn to read, these children may take their time learning to read but they do learn eventually. Sometimes when children can’t cut a word that they’re reading, they will look up for assistance. They must learn that looking at the words should provide the help they need. The more we read aloud a particular book to them before they read it themselves, the less they will look up for help.
It’s unjust to lay blame on children when they fail to become readers. Anxiety should set in only when a child of eight can’t read. Pressure and a sense of failure are no help at all to learners. Whatever happens in the world of school, reading aloud to our children at home should solve most reading problems and will always be a lifeline to their happiness, their literacy, and their future.
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