Phonological Awareness

I had to laugh at this phrase, and many others, from a jargon-filled academic paper on the benefits of reading aloud to children. I wish someone would read the article aloud to me... ;)

Still, some nice points (probably painfully obvious to most homeschoolers):

"Children with greater vocabulary knowledge and understanding
of spoken language tend to have less trouble with
reading." [Shocking!]

"Shared bookreading provides children with opportunities to
learn vocabulary from books as well as the use of decontexualised
language (the use of language to communicate new
information to those who have little experience with the
context of the information)." ["shared bookreading"? Gimmeabreak]

"It is not only the reading itself that is important – the type of
conversations adults and children have during shared bookreading,
as well as the emotional quality of the interactions and
the discussions related to print are even more important.65 It is
not sufficient to simply read a text aloud in order to encourage
children to learn from being read to. When parents are
supportive when interacting with their children around books,
this affects how children engage with books." [Makes sense, right?]

Getting past the jargon, there are a few interesting observations, especially for those of us looking to engage our relatives who work in the government education business.

h/t School Library Journal