Jane Braunger and Jan Patricia Lewis, pages 124-128, 1997.
This extract is from a book that provides a research baseline for teachers, policy makers and anyone interested in helping all children learn to read. Although it was published in 1997, and there has been a great deal more research in this field since that time, the content is still extraordinarily helpful in guiding the best practices in the teaching of reading and what influences children's success as readers. This part of the book distills the knowledge base about beginning reading into 13 core understandings and one of those is that ‘students need many opportunities to read, read, read’. It provides extensive details of the research supporting that particular core understanding. In recent times the main discussion about the teaching of reading tends to focus on approaches used to teach reading, but the importance of students having time to read, plus all of the practical issues relating to that, receives little attention. This extract is extremely important to read in that context.