National Read Across America Day: Dr. Todd Porter

March 2 is Nation­al Read Across Amer­i­ca Day. The day was estab­lished by the Nation­al Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion (NEA) in 1998 to help get kids excit­ed about read­ing. The day occurs each year on the birth­day of beloved children’s book author Dr. Seuss. Our Pedi­atrics team here at Quin­cy Med­ical Group knows the val­ue of read­ing to your child’s devel­op­ment. We asked a few ques­tions of QMG Pedi­a­tri­cian Dr. Todd Porter on the top­ic of lit­er­a­cy. Below are his responses.

When should you start read­ing to chil­dren?
You should start read­ing to your baby dur­ing the preg­nan­cy and con­tin­ue after he/​she is born.

How does read­ing ben­e­fit chil­dren?
Read­ing is a won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty to bond with your child and to expose their grow­ing minds to oral lan­guage which will build their vocab­u­lary. Oral lan­guage is a fun­da­men­tal com­po­nent of read­ing com­pre­hen­sion when they are older.

For school-age kids, if a par­ent has con­cerns about their child’s read­ing abil­i­ty, what should they do?
If the par­ent has a con­cern about their child’s read­ing abil­i­ty they should speak to the child’s teacher to see how he/​she is scor­ing on read­ing assess­ments. Ask if the child is read­ing at grade lev­el. I would also ask what tier lev­el of read­ing sup­port the child qual­i­fies for which starts with basic Tier 1 (class­room teacher) up to Tier 3 (read­ing inter­ven­tion­ist). It is help­ful to ask the school what core read­ing pro­gram is used and if read­ing inter­ven­tion pro­vid­ed is Struc­tured Lit­er­a­cy which is found­ed in sys­tem­at­ic and explic­it phon­ics. One pop­u­lar type of Struc­tured Lit­er­a­cy is Orton-Gilling­ham. Par­ents can review this Lit­er­a­cy Dia­logue Too tool to pre­pare for such con­ver­sa­tions with the child’s school.

Why is this such an impor­tant top­ic for you per­son­al­ly?
Lit­er­a­cy has become anoth­er devel­op­men­tal domain that pedi­a­tri­cians should mon­i­tor. Per­son­al­ly, I have two chil­dren with dyslex­ia and have wit­nessed their strug­gles in school with learn­ing to read so that they can even­tu­al­ly read to learn. I have wit­nessed patients expe­ri­ence school fail­ure due to read­ing strug­gles. With Struc­tured Lit­er­a­cy in our schools, we can pre­vent this.