Benefits of Reading 30 Minutes a Day

As a parent, you may have had teachers or statistics telling you that it is super important for your students to be reading 30 minutes a day. As a teacher, you may see the difference in your students that read for 30 minutes a day vs those who are not able to get that much reading done. Students that read at home for 30 minutes a day have significantly more reading experience than students who don’t and this is only one of the benefits of reading 30 minutes a day. There are so many others that I list below.

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More Prepared for School

One of the first benefits of reading 30 minutes a day is that students are more prepared as they go into school. Students that have had parents reading to them 30 minutes a day in the first five years of their lives know the basic structure of how to read books they may not know all the vocabulary yet but they at least know how to open books and can trace the words with their eyes and this gives them an advantage over students who may have never even seen a book before they went into school. If students are read to 30 minutes a day from birth to 5 they will have 54,750 minutes of practice learning reading. If that is lowered to 30 minutes once or twice a week that is down to 15,600 minutes. If students are only read to once a week they only get 7,800 minutes of reading practice. Students who have not been read to a lot may come into kindergarten with only 60 minutes of reading practice. At that point, no teacher can actually make up for that discrepancy. Anytime that that is spent in the classroom cannot make up for the deficiency at home and those who were getting 30 minutes daily reading at home will probably continue to get that amount of reading.

Vocabulary Building

Anytime that students are reading and reading new books they are going to develop new vocabulary. This exposure to new words happens more significantly for students that read for at least 30 minutes a day. For every 1000 words read students usually only learn 1 new word which seems like very little. However, students that read 30 minutes a day are exposed to 13.7 million words and will learn 13,700 words from kindergarten to 12th grade. This makes a huge difference in vocabulary building. Students who don’t read 30 minutes a day will know significantly fewer words.

Better Reading Skills

Practice makes perfect is true on many levels. The more practice that students have when it comes to reading the better they will be. Even a little bit more helps. Students that are struggling readers can actually reach proficiency by reading for 6 more minutes a day. Even a little more is helpful for gaining better reading skills.

Better Writing Skills

Reading skills and writing skills go hand in hand on many levels also. I think this is why mentor sentences are important. Students can learn about how to write and grammar skills by reading other people writing. The other day I was working with a student and they needed help with understanding simple, compound, and complex sentences. I helped him learn more about this through reading and mentor sentences. We read a piece and I pulled out different sentences and asked him which category that they fit into and he was able to understand this grammar concept much better through reading. Reading can help improve students writing skills and the more reading they do the more that they were learning about writing.

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More likely to be at or above grade level skills

Students that read for at least 30 minutes a day became proficient readers and proficient readers by the time they are in 3rd grade are 5 times more likely to graduate high school on time than their peers that are not proficient readers. Students that were below level also were able to get to level with 6 more minutes of reading a day. With 30 minutes total reading a day they will become much more than at level but will exceed their grade levels in reading which is going to set them up for college and career success.

There are many benefits of reading 30 minutes a day. Students who read for at least 30 minutes a day have better outcomes in school and beyond they are more likely to graduate high school and college and achieve success in their lives. If you want an amazing reading activity to help students get reading practice I am giving my The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane reading comprehension activity to my subscribers for free. If you want to receive your free copy click the link below and fill out the form to become one of my subscribers.