Fourth-grade children, ages eight and nine, whose parents read with them at home have a half-year advantage in reading comprehension compared to those who do not. Family accompaniment opens a gap between students in terms of reading comprehension that is similar (in fact, a little higher) than that generated by differences in the socioeconomic level of the parents, although both factors are frequently related of the interventions that can be carried out at home, the involvement of parents in reading is one of those that have the most positive effects, for example, supervising the children’s homework, an action that seems to bear little fruit, and that should not be confused with another, which according to the available evidence is more useful, which consists of “establishing rules and routines about where, when and how they have to do their homework”, all this according to the collection of data, coming among other sources from the international evaluations of Pisa and Pirls, recently carried out by the Bofill Foundation.
The entity, based in Barcelona and dedicated to the study of educational policies from the perspective of equity, has just launched a program to increase reading support at home, with the warning that it is a serious problem. Between 20% and 23.2% of Spanish students have low levels of reading comprehension in fourth grade, which is usually a predictor of school failure. Research suggests that children from disadvantaged backgrounds who do well in school are good readers, with above-average reading skills, which the foundation says can “be crucial in overcoming the risk of social exclusion and generating a resilient student body. His campaign Families, allies of reading is aimed at offering educational centers, libraries and social entities methodology and practical resources so that they can carry out their own “training actions” of families in reading accompaniment.
Juan Mata, an educator and professor for 40 years at the University of Granada, has studied the phenomenon in depth “Sometimes it seems that reading corresponds only to a special area, the school, but it is not. The school has an important role, but the primary environment is the family. As they grow up, the boy or girl is impregnated with what they find around them. And a large part of what the family has already acquired, be it in reading, in social relationships, in playing sports or in dancing, conditions what their tastes and inclinations will be.
This process, in the case of reading, begins before the child sets foot in school, and continues afterward, says Mata. It is made of readings aloud before going to sleep, of family conversations around books, of visits with their parents to bookstores, of the presence of books, newspapers or magazines in their home, of gifts that consist of stories, comics or novels. “That ecosystem of the book is decisive, and unfortunately, I say it with pain, with it begins a curve that separates the children who enter the world of reading naturally and those who do not”. Reading comprehension has repercussions in almost all subjects, says Mata, from the Bofill Foundation: “If we are not capable of understanding the statement of a mathematical problem, it will be difficult for us to solve it.”
There is also a paradox about which Juan Mata warns. And it is that the school, the best weapon available to students from disadvantaged homes to compensate their initial disadvantage, tends to enlarge, “without realizing it”, that inequality of origin “Textbooks are designed for children who can read fluently. The concepts are designed for children with a specific vocabulary, the formation of which is greatly influenced by their particular family or social environment. And so, slowly, almost from the beginning, a separation begins between the children that begin with different reading proficiency and explodes years later in high school.
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