The “Matthew Effect” in Reading

There is a good reason why reading teachers are constantly harping about how important it is for every child to spend “ 20 minutes per day” reading purely for pleasure. Here is an interesting chart that shows the correspondence between minutes read and reading test scores.  Other research shows that vocabulary development occurs more through reading context than any other approach, no matter how excellent the planned program is. The term “Matthew Effect” has been applied to the reality that, in reading, “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer” (paraphrase of Matthew 25) because with each passing year, the gap in terms of the number of words read and vocabulary gained widens between the regular readers and those who read very little. No kidding! Just do it!