Home Library Size and Children’s Educational Success

June 5, 2010 By Dr. K Leave a Comment

How many books in your home?  Could you count them?  Do you even want to?   Researchers from the University of Nevada did just that…for 73,249 homes in 27 countries.  They wanted to explore the possible connection between home library size and children’s educational attainment.  The results of the study hit the presses a couple weeks ago.  Science Daily, for example, announced that “Books in Home as Important as Parents’ Education in Determining Children’s Educational Level.” I did some digging.  Always weary of grand claims about causation (that the number of books in a home, for example, “propels a child 3.2 years ahead in education” as was stated in the SD article), I decided to look at the study myself.  Here is what I found. Data:  Surveys from 27 countries.  The researchers did not actually go into the homes of the respondents – at least not physically.  … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Reading Instruction

Still Struggling after Years of Tutoring: How to Strenghten Your Child’s Working Memory

May 14, 2010 By Dr. K Leave a Comment

I just got off the phone with a good friend who’s worried about her daughter’s comprehension skills.  Years ago, she accepted the diagnosis of her daughter’s dyslexia – a reading disability marked by significant problems in phonological processing (the ability to identify and manipulate the smallest segments of sound).  But now she’s wondering why her 11 year-old struggles so much with writing a few paragraphs, while the other girls in her class are writing up to fourteen chapters for a school assignment about their make believe characters.  Grace wonders why her daughter needs to read things over and over again, now that her daughter’s decoding skills are basically in tact after years of intense tutoring.  She’s also noticing that her daughter watches the same movie over and over again without getting bored at the same silly parts. Hours earlier, I submitted the final … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Executive Function, Reading Instruction, Working Memory

Facebook to the Rescue…?!

April 24, 2010 By Dr. K Leave a Comment

There is a phenomenon on Facebook.  Friends (and I!) not only post photos of our children in silly or downright adorable poses, but we also use the virtual interface as a means of sharing our children’s “talk” – what’s coming out of their mouths that give us a glimpse into their wackiness, uniqueness, smarts, maturity, or cuteness.  We can capture a moment of time in our children’s sense-making of the world, and share it with our virtual pals on Facebook. We are putting ourselves and our kids into Cyberspace for people to get to know better…even if there are still some things about ourselves (and our kids) that we want to remain private. A similar phenomenon happens in the world of Reading Instruction in schools.  Teachers and districts choose to share some things about their students’ reading development, while leaving out other aspects of it.  In today’s era of … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Communication, Reading Instruction