Children Need Enormous Opportunities to Read and Write Real Things

But not all children are so lucky. Many children do not come from homes where they have seen adults constantly engaged in reading and writing and sharing and discussing what they have read or written. They arrive at school with no good idea of what reading and writing are for, much less any well-developed sense of even fundamental concepts about print and its relationship to talk.

Imagine that these children who haven't experienced these real reading and writing activities at home come to a school without classroom libraries and with a school library inadequately stocked with books and other information resources, understaffed (no one is readily available to help children find the perfect book), and largely inaccessible during and after the school day (only weekly class visits are allowed). In some of these schools children are not allowed to take the library books out of the school! Research shows that schools with many children from low-income families most likely fit the latter description (Duke, 2000; Guice, Allington, Johnston, Baker, & Michaelson, 1996; McGill-Franzen & Allington, 1993; Stipek, 2004). The children least likely to have books in their homes are the same children least likely to have books in their schools (McQuillan, 1998; Neuman & Celano, 2001).

Easy access to books, magazines, and other reading materials is an essential factor in schools where children become readers and writers (Allington, 2006). The classroom library is especially important for classrooms that work to create readers and writers. Well-designed classroom libraries work to increase the amount of reading that children do (Morrow, 1991). When classroom libraries are well designed and attractive and offer a wide range of appropriate books and magazines, children are more likely to use the libraries and read more books. This wider reading results in better readers (as measured on standardized tests). But most classroom libraries (90 percent) are not well designed nor well stocked (Fractor, Woodruff, Martinez, & Teale, 1993). Too often, classroom libraries have too few books, too little planning of the display, and little variety in either the difficulty or the types of books in the collections. In fact, by grade 5 only 25 percent of the classrooms have libraries!

Schools can create wonderful classroom libraries and school libraries, but doing so takes time and money. First, however, schools need a plan. Depending on the school and the community, the plan might be to develop better access to books over a 3-, 5-, or 10-year period. Until a plan is developed, access rarely improves. Without easy access to books, children are unlikely to become readers and writers.