Building Resilience & Confidence in Children

Why Reading Aloud Matters

As featured in the Teachers Matter Magazine www.teachersmattermagazine.com

Asa school librarian, I have received an increasing number of requests from teachers for books to help children deal with worry, stress and anxiety. Our collection has expanded to include a range of mostly picture books suitable to offer teachers as they support children to manage stress and anxiety - even children as young as five years old. These same teachers are also noting a decline of basic social and literacy skills, along with a lack of resilience in new entrants.

There are clearly a number of factors behind these shifts in behaviour and skill levels, including increased time spent on digital devices by adults and children. More time glued to screens equates to less time for human interaction and free-range play, less opportunity to explore the world and to learn to self manage. Natural language pathways in children’s early years are being interrupted and obstructed, meaning a deficiency in oral langauge skills and vocabulary when the children arrive at school.

A five-year-old should ideally be arriving at school with a working vocabulary of 5000 – 6000 words, but it is clear that many new entrants at school - especially those who are struggling to express themselves verbally - have a much reduced vocabulary stock. Lack of vocabulary and lack of resilience creates a state of disempowerment for an individual. Without the ability to express oneself, to articulate feelings, to solve simple problems, to persevere at a task, it is easy to see how a child might become stressed, worried or anxious.

Reading aloud is an obvious way to introduce children to the wonders of language and storytelling and to build up vocabulary, but a recent study from the University of South Australia has found that reading aloud to children provides so much more. Researchers have found that reading aloud can triple a child’s resilience at school, particularly for children deemed at-risk.