Case study
Children learn through different methodologies, but the most effective is read-aloud. It is an instructional practice where parents, caregivers, and teachers read the text, passages stories, or sings songs aloud to children. The facilitator must incorporate variations in tone, pitch, pauses, volume, maintain eye contact, and ask questions to ensure that delivery is fun and enjoyable. Reading aloud is the most critical skill as children grow and learn about things in their surroundings. It also helps build a fluent nature of reading since it introduces vocabulary that helps create a foundational basis for the reading culture. For example, reading bedtime stories is an effective way to help kids relate to their environment; thus, a kid is introduced to good reading habits. Before a child can start reading or writing, it must listen to more stories being narrated or read. It is at this point that they learn how a single word can have different meanings and expressions. Therefore, this paper aims to understand the impact of reading aloud to children via media using three primary case studies; Listen with mother, Jackanory, and Cbeebies bedtime stories.
Over the years, media has taken a significant role in educating children and ensuring they learn the art of listening and its importance. Additionally, education continues to use the media to communicate essential aspects and has been significant, especially to small children. Reading aloud to children promotes children’s language development and literacy, leading to positive reading attitudes. Regardless of the medium used (radio or television), reading aloud is of much more advantage to children. For instance, it builds on cognitive skills such as paying attention, reasoning, reading, thinking, remembering, and, more importantly, problem-solving.
Listen with mother (1st case study)
Listen with Mother was a popular show that was broadcasted on BBC light program and ran between January 16th, 1950, and September 10th, 1982, which was bout 15 minutes. Initially produced by Freda Lingstrom and over the years, it was presented by Julia Lang, Daphne Oxenford, and Eileen Browne, among others. The show consisted of songs, stories, and nursery rhymes specially made for children and mothers at home. Later on, the program was moved to BBC radio. At the beginning of every episode, there was always an open phrase, “Are you sitting comfortably?” which caught the attention of children to be attentive and keen. When the program began, a piano was always played, which went well with the rhythm that it was quarter to two; that was the exact time the program aired. This aspect helped children learn the attribute of telling time.
Jackanary (2nd case study)
Jackanory originated from an old nursery rhyme “I’ll tell a story,” and all a child had to do was listen. The main aim of this program was to create a stimulating interest in reading. It’s a BBC children television series that was initially broadcasted between 1965 and 1996. The first story was read by Lee Montague “Cap-o-Rushes,” while the last episode was covered by Alan Bennett, “The House at Pooh Corner. The program lasted for about 15 minutes and covered about 3640 attacks in the United Kingdom. In 2006, it was briefly revived, which was formatted as Jackanory Junior on Cbeebies around 2006 and 2009.
CBeebies bedtime stories (3rd case study)
This program is a program owned by the BBC, which aims to get children’s attention under the age of 7. It features stories by celebrities such as Tom Hardy, who narrate to children their actions, for example, Tom and the Dog on their way to the United States.
The three case studies are significant in one way; that is, they portray the significance of reading aloud to children via the media, i.e., television and radio. In the first case, at the peak of the show, many people were following the series, which shows the impact of reading allowed for children. BBCs’ primary focus is to help children acquire the culture of reading. The BBC channel received feedback from numerous people that children enjoyed listening much more than watching, making Jackanory a hit during that period. However, all three case studies have one thing in common; they depict the importance of reading materials through the media. For example, in one series, Listen with Mother showed Eileen feeding the chicks, and from that perspective, children can connect with real-life experiences at home.
In all three cases, different strategies have been employed; for example, in Listen with mother only used one narrator Eileen which could be a disadvantage to the children for listening or watching the same person repeatedly. However, in Jackanory, the art of storytelling improved and started to introduce a range of storytellers. Simultaneously, the progress is much better for Cbeebies bedtime stories in that different celebrities tell the stories to the children by use of diverse backgrounds. An example is a recent star who read bedtime stories to children during the Corona period. Children are likely to relate to these stories because he narrates them while in his garden.
This study will come up with the impacts of reading aloud to children via media stations. Up to what extent is reading aloud practical to children? While this learning method may be useful for some children, others might lack the ability to access learning materials due to financial constraints, status, or physical disability, in which case these modes of learning might not be sufficient. It affects so much on children’s ability to comprehend little information, which might lower their academic excellence. A teacher must understand the psychology of children, especially if all classes are put together.
With solid backgrounds of different students, the facilitator needs to ensure that children must comprehend the information acquired, which is a significant factor of reading and learning, which helps students focus instead of dealing with challenging words that might be hard to understand. Stories are told in a much simpler manner in which the children can relate to and understand; therefore, this study will also come up with recommendations and strategies to be implemented to help children who can not access the media to listen or watch—for example, introducing a corner in public libraries in the UK where disadvantaged children can gather together to listen to stories being dramatized for them to have a clear picture.
Conclusively, different methodologies will have other impacts on extra children. For example, some will enjoy being read to orally, and some will like it more watching while some pay more attention to listening. By the time a child grows, he/she should be able to encode and decode information effectively, and it highly determined by the skills acquired during childhood. In that case, the art of reading aloud can have a negative or positive effect on a child.