Cheetah Readers: Unite For Literacy
November 1st, 2018
You can read books yourself or have them read to you!
Why Do Books Matter
Research shows that long before kindergarten, families have a huge impact on their children's learning success. The keys to helping young children be ready to read include:
Lots of books in the home.
Studies show that children who come from homes with 100 books or more have 3 times the chance of completing 9th grade as those from bookless homes. Every book - borrowed books, e-books, comic books - matters. (M.D.R. Evans, et al., 2010)
Lots of time reading together.
Again, it is the children who are read to every day who become good readers by 4th grade. When children develop the habit of reading while they are young, it sticks with them throughout life. (National Assessment of Educational Progress, 2013)
Lots of good conversation.
The children who are read to and "bathed in language" every day when they are young know many more words and understand how books work, giving them a head start in school. (Hart and Risley, 1995)
Unite For Literacy's Vision
We picture a world where all children have access to an abundance of books that celebrate their languages and cultures and cultivate a life-long love of reading. As a for-profit social enterprise, we partner with businesses to change the literacy landscape of their communities by introducing families to our free digital library.
Unite for Literacy has originated a unique way of assessing and talking about book scarcity. We analyzed statistical variables including income, ethnicity, geography and languages as they relate to the number of books in homes. The resulting interactive Book Desert Map presents our conceptual findings in visual form from the state down to local scale. Our intention is for this map to illuminate the problem of book scarcity and initiate conversations across the public, private and civic sectors about the geography of books and reading, in order to focus community efforts to create book abundance.
Mr. Fredde
Crestview Elementary School
Email: troy.fredde@nkcschools.org
Website: troyafredde.blog
Twitter: @TroyF42