Huffing and Puffing: Overcoming the Literacy Gap with Children's Books

In a metaphor about disparity, if we were to compare our district’s literacy problem with The Three Little Pigs, would our students be the little pig that built his house out of sticks? The lucky students – the ones that survive our educational system – started building their academic literacy early, reading children’s books and having their parents read to them. Parental involvement in a child’s reading development has proven to increase student literacy in later years. However, access to fairy tales like The Three Little Pigs, nursery rhymes, and children’s books is limited, albeit assumed universal. Students in high school that are still tested as Limited English Proficient (LEP) often do not have the same extensive reading background or parents with proficient levels of English literacy. In Los Angeles, the population of LEP students is mostly low-income, minority students, making the literacy gap a social justice gap. If the metaphor extends, the future is bleak for the little pig that did not have enough time or resources to build a strong foundation. The Big Bad Wolf usually gets that one.

A California Teacher of the Year winner once taught my education class an engaging lesson on how to teach story grammar. The lesson requires students to have prior knowledge about the fairy tale, The Three Little Pigs. When I tried the lesson in my classroom, only half of my students knew the story. Educators often assume that students have had as extensive a background in childhood reading. However, many students are not born and raised in English-speaking homes or in homes populated by print materials.

When a high school student’s literacy is founded in reading at a young age, students with parents who are not proficient in any language are at a disadvantage. Literacy can be increased when parents participate in shared reading with their children. In the classroom, students face a number of literacy challenges from reading comprehension to literary analysis. Exposure to books at home would better develop their reading skills, which in turn, will better develop their skill set. Reading more will help students develop a decoding system, but that may not guarantee comprehension of what they read.

As a high school English teacher, accepting that early childhood experiences (or lack thereof) in reading have irrevocably affected their literacy is difficult. Understanding why students are grade levels below in reading is frustrating. Expecting parents with little education and no English language proficiency to teach shared reading strategies with their children is impractical. Our solutions to battling low levels of literacy may need to start with our current high school students’ parents and younger siblings. Change is generational, after all. After school, schools need to teach parents the necessary reading skills that need to be transferred from parent to child. Many schools have parent centers that can do more than teach life skills and English.

High school teachers can assign their students more projects that ask students to share their learning with younger siblings and students in the elementary school. For example, last year in my 9th grade English class, my students made their own children’s books on stories from the Odyssey and Greek Mythology. We then walked across the street to Gratt’s Elementary School to read our books to first and second graders. The younger students loved the visit and were impressed by the bigger students’ skill and knowledge about the stories. My students finally recognized that our two themes for the year – voice and agency – could be realized in themselves. Some versions of that famous tale of the three pigs have a happier ending. The wisest pig – the one that took the time to build a strong foundation – saves his unluckier friends by inviting them to seek shelter with him. We must recruit our older students to help younger students become strong readers and ultimately literate citizens.