About Lori Samlin Miller
Rowan University, Bachelors Degree: Teacher of the Handicapped K-12, 1977
Rowan University, Masters of Arts in the Graduate School of Journalism and Creative Writing, 2007
20 plus years as an Educator, Consultant, and Mentor to Individuals with Special Needs and their families
Published more than 100 times in dozens of print and online publications
Wife, mother, travel and food writer and blogger currently residing in New Jersey
Featured speaker for community and educational events
Hospital caring clown
Proud member of Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI)
Author of the children's picture books, Stay Where I Can See You, We've Come to the Road, and the middle-grade novel, No Prayer Is Ever Wasted.
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Children's Literacy
Not all children grow up in homes with a lot of books, or are regularly read to. Yet, these two things correlate highly with developing language as well as later reading success. Fortunately, research shows that many things are effective in offsetting the effects when early literacy is not encouraged in children's homes. Stimulating a love of language, modeling language and rich vocabulary, and using stories to expand a child's grasp of the larger world are all effective in attempting to close the gap between children growing up in poverty and those where books and language are a regular part of life. When young children are read to, they gain valuable vocabulary, an understanding of necessary ideas, and a bigger picture of the world. This is a vital gap to address before children are ten years old and have lagged too far behind their peers.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a division of the U.S. Department of Education, Children who are read to at home have a higher success rate in school. They describe children who are read to at home as having advantages besides material advantages over children who are not read to: According to to NCES2, only 53 percent of children ages three to five were read to daily by a family member (1999). Children in families with incomes below the poverty line are less likely to be read to aloud everyday than are children in families with incomes at or above poverty.
The more types of reading materials there are in the home, the higher students are in reading proficiency, according to the Educational Testing Service. The Educational Testing Services reported that students who do more reading at home are better readers and have higher math scores.