"Children learn to read only by reading.
Therefore, the only way to facilitate their learning
to read is to make reading easy for them."
-Frank Smith (reading theorist)
Reading: How Parents Can Help
There is no more important homework than reading. Research shows that the highest achieving students are those who devote leisure time to reading, even when the school day and year are only mid-length and homework isn’t excessive. Recently, the largest-ever international study of reading found that the single most important predictor of academic success is the amount of time children spend reading books, more important even than economic or social status. And one of the few predictors of high achievement in math and science is the amount of time children devote to pleasure reading.
Children read in order to become smarter about the world and how it works. They read to broaden their vocabularies and to become better readers- faster and more fluent, purposeful, engaged, critical, and satisfied. They read to stretch their imaginations, to escape to other lives, times, and places. And they read to become good people- knowledgeable about and compassionate toward the range of human experience.
There is no substitute for regular, sustained time with books. Please sit down with your child tonight and talk about the best time and place for reading to happen at your house. Is after school and before dinner a good point to catch his or her breath, curl up with a book, and escape into a great story? Or will your child join the book lovers who like to read ourselves to sleep at night? And whenever the reading happens, is the environment quiet? Is the TV off? And is there a good light?
We’ve learned that the choices of books available to kids today are so wonderful that reading makes for joyful homework. We’ve also seen that children whose parents and teachers expect and encourage them to read are likely to grow up as happy, skilled readers.
Tips for Parents of Beginning Readers
The following are suggestions for different ways that parents might support primary-grade (K-2) readers. These are enjoyable, successful approaches that teachers use…
Read aloud frequently from easy books that your child would like to read but can’t, yet. Sit side by side, so you can look at the pages together. Point to words occasionally, and underline them with your finger as you read. Pause and make room for the child’s predictions, questions, and comments about the story, the illustrations, and the language.
Anticipate that your child will want to hear the same books again and again, and take advantage of his or her love of particular stories by trying to read them as many times as you’re asked, even if inside you’re groaning with boredom. Often these are among the first stories children will read on their own.
Read aloud but leave an occasional blank, with you voice, when you come to words or phrases you think your child can guess at. Discuss the reasons for his or her predictions: clues such as the beginning letter sounds, the size and shape of the word, illustrations, and common sense within the structure of the sentence or the meaning of the story.
Read a bit aloud- a phrase or sentence- while underlining the words with your finger. Then ask your child to read it back to you, like an echo, and underline it with his or her finger. Say, “Touch the words with your eyes” or “Read it with your finger.”
When a beginning reader is reciting a memorized book, ask him or her to “touch the words” as he or she says them, drawing your child’s attention to left-to-right structures, letters, words, and the spaces between words. Say, “Read it with your finger.” Ask questions: “Did it match? Did you have enough words? Did you run out?”
Encourage a child who’s beginning to read to select and reread books that he or she finds easy. In a bookstore or library, look for books like those your child brings home from school, with a strong match between the words and the accompanying illustration, and with just one sentence or phrase per page.
Take turns: You read a sentence aloud, then your child does.
Beginning readers sometimes substitute a word that doesn’t make sense- or even sound like English. Try to bite your tongue and give them enough time to hear the miscue and correct it themselves. It they don’t hear it, wait until the end, then gently question, “Did that make sense to you?” or “You read ____,” repeating exactly what was read. “Does that sound right?” Then say, “Try it again, and think what might make sense.”
When your child is reading aloud with you and comes to a word he or she doesn’t know, talk about its beginning sounds and its shape. Then tell your child, “Go back to the beginning of the sentence and get your mouth ready” to provide the word that begins with the letter[s] in question. Have him or her try the whole sentence again. It’s wonderful how often children are able to put together all the clues- sentence structure, meaning of the sentence, letters, sounds, and shape- and read the correct word the next time through.
If your child can’t figure out a word or doesn’t have a guess, by all means, go ahead and tell him or her.
Encourage and praise a beginning reader’s self-corrections and informed guesses.
When your child wants to read a book aloud to you or someone else in the family, recognize that no one reads anything perfectly the first time through. This is called “miscuing,” and although everybody does it, including parents and teachers, it can be particularly frustrating for beginning readers to make a lot of miscues. Encourage your child to practice alone first. Then, when he or she reads aloud the rehearsed materials, encourage phrasing and reading for meaning by saying, “Read it as if you’re talking.”
Spend a short time hearing your child read aloud. Stop before he or she gets tired.
Talk about books with your child just as you would chat with a friend: “What did you think of the book? How did it make you feel? What did you like? What didn’t you like? Who was your favorite character? What was your favorite part? How would you compare it to other books about ____ or by ____?” Concentrate on your child’s feelings, preferences, and opinions about the books he or she reads and the stories you read aloud.
Try not to display anxiety or frustration. Lots of practice and relaxed, happy experiences with books are two keys to children’s becoming fluent, joyful readers.
Three Kinds of Books
The books that children take home at night to read, or hear read aloud, fall into three categories of difficulty. Leslie Funkhouser, a teacher in New Hampshire, defined the distinctions we make among books [in our classroom]. Holidays are easy first reads or old favorites: a book a student has read many times before or one he or she picks up to take a break from harder books. Just Rights are new books that help a reader practice and gain experience- they contain a few words per page that the child doesn’t know. Challenges are titles that a child would like to read independently but that are too difficult right now. There may be too many unfamiliar words, text that’s too dense, paragraphs that are too long, a plot or structure that’s difficult to follow, multiple main characters, or concepts that the child can’t grasp yet.
We appreciate these definitions because they label books, not students. All readers of every age have our own Holidays, Just Rights, and Challenges. Often, as we learn more about a topic, work with a particular text, or just gain more experience as readers, a Challenge can become a Just Right. At school we watch as beginning readers make so much progress over the course of a year that a title they could only listen to in September becomes- over time and with practice- a book they read smoothly, with understanding and confidence, in June.
Children should spend some time at home with all three categories of books, but most of their time should be spent with Just Rights, because these are the books that help students learn the most, about reading and about the topics they want to read about.
Some time should be spent with Holidays, to help children gain confidence, increase their reading rate, revisit old friends, and read for pure pleasure.
Finally, children should spend a little time with Challenges, because these often tell stories or convey information that children want and can figure out with our help- and because they show students the books that are out there waiting for them as readers.
When your child reads- silently, to you, or with you- ask about the book: Is it a Holiday? A Just Right? A Challenge? If it’s a Just Right or a Challenge, be ready to provide help with unfamiliar words or concepts. And, again, bear in mind that readers shouldn’t spend all their time with just one kind of book. Children need experience with materials of varying degrees of difficulty if they are to grow to independence as readers and understand all the things that reading is good for.
Reading Practice:
Find a quiet place to read with your group (hallway, courtyard, etc). Make sure to social distance while reading and discussing books. Masks must be worn.
Ways to Read:
Independent- Have students read alone
Choral Read- Read all together with students
Echo Read- You read a sentence or paragraph and then have student(s) reread the same sentence or paragraph
Page Read- Each of you take a turn reading a page
Read aloud- You read aloud to students and they listen
Questions to Ask:
Before Reading:
Take a picture walk and discuss pictures (this helps activate prior knowledge and vocabulary)
Make a prediction on what the story is about
Go through and find “hard words” to discuss them prior to reading
Does this remind you of another book you have read? Why?
During Reading:
(stop and ask)
How are you like the characters?
What do you think will happen next? Why?
Why did the author of the book make that happen? (referring to an event in the story)
What information do we know from the picture?
After Reading:
Identify all the story elements (characters, setting, problem, solution)
Identify the 5 W’s (who, what, where, when, why)
Retell the beginning, middle, and end
How is this story like another story you have read?
How are you like this story?
If you could change the ending, what would you change?
What question would you ask the author if you met him/her?
What question would you ask the main character?
What is the author’s purpose? (persuade, inform, entertain)
What is the main idea? What are some supporting details?