We will be using The Fountas & Pinnell Guide to Teaching Literacy to instruct the Massachusetts Frameworks for Reading, Writing, and Speaking and Listening. Students will be taught many mini-lessons to improve their strategic reading of increasingly complex fiction and non-fiction texts.
Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick
How to Support your Child at Home
Mix Up Your Reading: Read different genres of texts with your child. For example, pick a poem or play, read it together, and then talk about the ideas, perspectives, and themes in it. Also read books that take place in a variety of locations.
Gain Perspective: Read two different texts about an event you and your child attended (or you can each write your own personal account of it). Ask your child to compare the differences in the perspectives they are written from.
Start a Book Club: It can include family members, your child’s friends and their parents, or just the two of you. Select a book together and establish small reading assignments (perhaps one or two chapters per week). Choose a specific “meeting” time and place, such as a weekly trip to a local café or park, or chat over some snacks at home and discuss the book. Talk about its themes, using concrete examples you find in the text. After you finish one book, pick another by the same author about a similar topic (or in the same genre) and compare the two.
Become Investigators: Pick an event or moment such as a family meal, preparations in the morning, or a car ride. Ask your child to silently observe the scenes and take detailed notes on what he observes. Your child can then read his notes to everyone who was there. (Giving kids journals they love to write in will make this all the more fun. Go a step further by asking your child to develop ideas about the event that he observed (for example, “Getting ready in the morning is a very hectic time in our family. Maybe we should all wake up earlier or have assigned jobs.”) and use evidence to support these ideas.