How Much Should Children Read Aloud Each Day?

Many literacy organisations recommend between 10 and 20 minutes of reading per day, largely due to the exposure of words this brings to a student. However, citations linked to these recommendations are typically not peer reviewed studies. Most of the existing recommendations seem to be based upon an article from 1988 in which the researchers predict that 10 minutes of reading per day will add approximately 300,000 more words read per year (Anderson, Wilson & Fielding, 1988).

Meta-analysis (Mol & Bus, 2011) findings show a positive correlation between reading volume and achievement. However specific amounts of reading or word counts for reading levels does not seem to exist in research to date.

One study (O’Connor et al., 2012) showed that 4th year students’ performance was better in the 20 minutes per session group rather than 10 minutes per session group. But the 2nd year students group had no difference in performance between either.

From the extent of our literature review, there aren’t solid guidelines. However, it would stand to reason that proficient reading, like virtually every other human proficiency, benefits through extensive engagement (or practice) with the activity. When early readers first learn reading they fatigue quickly and therefore less time is appropriate for reading. However as reading acquisition and stamina improves it stands to reason that longer time reading will expose students to more words and more practice and therefore produce superior results.

With this is mind, PLD’s Decodable Reading Books are designed to increase in word length progressively, So as students progress through the sets, the amount of daily reading should progress. The Foundation and Year 1 books are designed for a whole book to be read each day (with the additional phonic and oral language tasks). The Year 2 books (soon to start being released) are designed for a book to be read over the week and 1-2 chapters to be read each day. Access our comprehensive catalogue here.

References

O’conner, 2012: Variations in Practice Reading Aloud: Ten Versus Twenty Minutes
Anderson, Wilson & Fielding, 1988: Growth in Reading and How Children Spend Their Time Outside of School on JSTOR