Welcome to home reading in grade 3! I am very excited to be working with you and your child to assist in enhancing their reading abilities and love for reading. Our home reading goal is for your child to choose a book EACH night and read with a loved one at home for 20 minutes. During and/or after reading, students are asked to discuss the text they have read by completing  1 oral reading activity included in the book mark below, with a parent or guardian. At the end of the month, students are expected to have completed most of the activities on the reading bookmark and will begin a new bookmark at the beginning of the following month. Please celebrate their successes and discuss goals for improvement at the end of each month. Students are NOT required to return these bookmarks to school, rather they are simply a way to encourage reading and oral discussion of a text at home. Thank you for supporting your child and exposing them to texts, vocabulary, reading strategies and conversations that will enable your child to become a successful, lifelong reader.  :)

Reading Tips For Helping Your Child at Home 

1. Set aside a special time for home reading each night. Create a daily reading routine.

2. Create pleasurable reading experiences: comfortable location, choose all different kinds of books that interest them (fiction,non-fiction, action, fantasy adventure, book series), use different voices for different characters and praise their efforts and progress.

3. Be a mentor in reading. Show yourself engaging in daily reading experiences (reading books, magazines, newspapers, comics, food labels, schedules, instructions, advertisements, recipes etc.). Complete think-alouds, expressing your thoughts, feelings and strategies you use while reading.

3. Build habits of understanding to decode unfamiliar words (looking at pictures, blending sounds, looking for chunks, rereading).

4. Talk with your child about their reading and the strategies they are using to demonstrate comprehension of the text (making connections, visualizations, predictions, asking questions. retelling the text). Give them time to think.

5. Make the experience authentic and relevant. What is the big lesson or author’s point of view?

6. Notice when your child seems to tire. A book can always be finished the next day. :)

Websites To Support Student Reading at Home

1. Raz Kids: https://www.raz-kids.com/

2. Read Theory: https://readtheory.org/

3. Epic: http: www.getepic.com/students

**Passwords to allow your child access to these programs will be sent home on a separate paper.

MY READING BOOKMARK

Name: __________________

Parent:__________________

1. RETELL - 

__characters           

__ setting

__ plot (beginning, middle, end)

__ problem

__ solution

__ facts

2.EXAMINE -

__ activate prior knowledge (what I know)

__ connections (reminds me of: T-S, T-T, T-W)

__ visualizations (mental pictures)

__ predictions (what will happen next?)

__ questions (I wonder…?)

__ inferences (read between the lines)

__ most important ideas

__ author’s message (big lesson)

__ text features

3. EVALUATE - 

__ number of stars: 1 to 5? Why?

__ correct title? Why/why not?

__ change the ending? How?

__ which character is relatable to you?

4. WORD DETECTIVES - 

__ found word wall words

__ found nouns, verbs, or adjectives

__ counted syllables

__ found short or long vowel sounds

5. STRATEGIES I USED - 

__ pictures

__ beginning sounds

__ blending sounds

__ chunking 

__ skipping and hopping back

__ rereading

__ expression

__ fluency (smooth reading pace)