What can you do to help your child with reading at home:

• Work with your child on recognizing both upper and lowercase letters out of order and knowing all of the letter sounds. Your child should have this skill mastered by the winter holiday.

• Nightly bed time stories are the best way to find quality family time while also helping your child learn skills for reading. While you are reading with your child make sure to ask questions about who is in the story and what is going on. You can also ask CLOSE questions as found on this page for deeper learning.

• Practice the word lists with your child as often as possible. The books we read are directly tied to those lists. The more words your child can read quickly and independently the higher the level of book he or she can read.

Questions to ask your child to help with Reading Comprehension

After your child reads a book to you (or you read a book to him/her) I suggest asking a couple of these questions to help with comprehending the story. As children grow, reading comprehension is often the more difficult skill to learn compared to learning how to just read the words. Happy Reading!

• What happened at the beginning of the story? Then what happened next? What happened at the end?

• How did the author make this story funny/surprising/interesting?

• What was interesting about the character(s) or situation in this story?

• Who were the characters in the story?

• Was there a funny part of this story? What part was funny? Why do you think it was funny? (or sad, happy)

• Was this book fiction or nonfiction? How do you know?

• Can you describe the events of this story in the order that they happened?

• Could this story (if it is fiction) be true? Explain.

• How do the pictures help you understand the story (text)?

• How is the setting important in this story?

• Did you enjoy this story? Why or why not?

• Did the pictures help you understand this story? Why or why not?

• How did the story make you feel? Why?

• What do you think about the beginning (or ending) of the story? Why?

• Would you be friends with this character? Why or why not?

• What did you think about how the character behaved in this story?

• Do you think the events in this story could have really happened? Why or why not?

• Would you recommend this book to anyone? Why or why not?

• Did you learn anything new about ______? Explain what you learned.

• How would you rate the quality of the illustrations in this book? Why?

• Could you create a better or more exciting ending to this story? Explain.

• What made this story funny? Interesting? Exciting? Sad? Etc. Why?

What can you do to help your child with writing at home:

• Practice, practice, practice. Have your child make grocery lists, write in a journal, write letters to family and friends, etc. as often as possible.

• Work with your child on being able to independently write all letters both upper and lowercase. This skill should be mastered by the end of the school year.

• Help your child hear the sounds in words. When sounding unknown words out slowly help your child recognize the sound and write the letter down. With practice this will become easier with time. By November your child should be able to write the beginning sound of an unknown word. By March your child should be able to consistently write the beginning and ending sound of a word, and by May your child should be writing the beginning, middle, and ending sounds in words.

Day 2-?

• • Look at the day 1 plan, review with your child what he/she stated, and now he/she transfers it onto a larger piece of paper.

  • I usually encourage the kids to state their exact sentence prior to writing. He/she can even point to the imaginary words on the line to help with remembering.

  • Work on one page a day unless their is extra motivation

  • TIP: Have your child work in the following order:

    • 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. Quick draw in pencil what you are going to write about (less than 5 minutes)

                     2. Write

                     3. When the writing it complete, NOW your child can go back and color the picture and add more detail.

When the book is complete your child can create a front and back cover and staple it all together!