Every year, New York Academics helps dozens of kids prepare for the standardized tests (SHSAT, ISEE, Hunter, SAT, etc). It’s always rewarding when our students get good scores and into their schools of choice but it’s also terribly frustrating to see kids who possess innate intelligence flounder.
What is the single most important thing that you, as a parent, can do to make sure that your child is prepared for testing (and academic life in general!)? You can encourage your child to be a reader.
It’s a simple fact: kids who read for pleasure become better readers. Better readers have an enormous advantage in most academic areas, including all types of standardized tests. This is not news to anyone. Something that might be news though, is that quantity of reading seems to be more important than quality of reading. Simply put, pushing your child to read harder or more “sophisticated” material may be irrelevant. It might even be counter productive if you inadvertently discourage your kids from reading what they most enjoy. I’m not aware of any good scientific studies that have been done on this topic (if you know of one, I’d love to hear about it!) but in my experience, any and all reading contributes to increased vocabulary, reading comprehension, and reading speed.
I admit that I have a personal bias in this area. When I was a kid, I read constantly, but a lot of what I choose was “kid pulp”- series like Nancy Drew, The Babysitters Club, and Choose Your Own Adventure books. Thankfully, my parents left me to my own devices, and eventually I also picked up works like Siddhartha, Hamlet, and The Origin of Species- but not before I was ready. But even before I moved on to “respectable literature” I always scored in the 99th percentile on standardized reading tests. Coincidence? I don’t think so. (Thanks, Nancy Drew.)
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