SUMMER READING CLUB 2024
The long-term effects of daily reading practice
What’s the difference between kids who read more than 30 minutes per day and those who read less than 15 minutes per day? Twelve million.
Students with an average daily reading time of 30+ minutes between kindergarten and twelfth grade are projected to encounter 13.7 million words. At graduation, their peers who averaged less than 15 minutes of daily reading practice are likely to be exposed to only 1.5 million words. The difference is more than 12 million words.
Children in between, who read 15–29 minutes per day, will encounter an average of 5.7 million words—less than half of the high-reading group but nearly four times that of the low-reading group.
Reading gains fall well below average when daily reading practice is less than 15 minutes
An analysis comparing the engaged daily reading practice and reading scores of more than 2.2 million students2 found that students who:
Read less than five minutes per day saw the lowest level of growth
Read 5–14 minutes a day saw sluggish gains that fell below national averages
Read 15 minutes or more a day saw accelerated reading gains higher than the national average
Read just over a half-hour per day saw the greatest gains of all