Emma Haeusel

BCORE 119

4/25/16

For this assignment, I looked at the article “Bedtime Stories for Young Brains”, published in the New York Times and written by Perri Klass. In this article, Klass examines the benefits of reading picture books to young children to help with brain development and reading later on. Klass looks at a study published by the journal Pediatrics in which they looked at brain activity in children who were read picture books. I chose to look at this article because I want to be an elementary school teacher and this relates to what I am interested in studying and my future career. I think it is very important to read to children and I know that I myself greatly benefitted from being read to as a young child.

The article is focused on brain development in children, the benefits of reading out loud to young children, and the long term implications of reading to children. The study published by Pediatrics showed that children who had been read to more frequently had greater brain activity in “the parietal-temporal-occipital association cortex” of their brain than those who had not been read to. By reading to a child, it requires them to use their imagination as well as connect the words they hear with the images that correspond to those words. It also showed that children that had been read to were more likely to transition to longer chapter books and novels as well as being better readers overall. In the long run, reading out loud to children has many benefits, from word-picture association, broader vocabulary, and all the benefits that come with spending quality time with those the children care for.

(http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/17/bedtime-stories-for-young-brains/)