Reading stuff can make you smarter

This isn’t particularly new news, nor is it surprising, I don’t think, to those of us who read a lot.

Weve known for a while how children learn to read and the foundational milestones they must achieve to become fluent and accomplished readers. But now we are seeing that the amount of print children are exposed to has profound cognitive consequences, and that the act of reading itself serves to increase the achievement differences among children.

Research has shown that early success at reading is clearly one of the keys that unlocks a lifetime of reading habits. We now understand that children who crack the spelling-to sound code early appear to enter something like a positive feedback loop, a reciprocal effect in which reading increases their ability to read.

Which doesn’t at all surprise me. While I didn’t learn to read at an early age – I was five, if I recall correctly, and in kindergarten – I did learn to love reading pretty much from the moment I picked up a book.

And from that point on, I was always in the library, getting more books and more books and more books.

Reading was a joy to me.

And pretty quickly, I was a few grade levels ahead of the other kids in terms of reading comprehension and all that other jazz.

Anyway, it’s an interesting article, so go read the rest.