What does beginning reading look like? What does it sound like? How do I know if my child is ready to read? What books should she read? I must say that most people think beginning reading books look like this: “The cat sat. The cat sat on a mat. The hat is on the cat.” If those are the words, this is what you hear readers do: “The c-a-t, c-a-t, cat. The cat s-a-t, s-a-t, sat. The cat sat.” What? Is this really a story? Who writes this stuff? When I was learning to read, the stories were terrible! The first story in the basal reader had all words with short a sounds, then the next story had all short e sounds. Ed sat on a bed with an egg (or something terrible like that). How many stories can you make with the short e sound that are exciting and authentic? For many students, this is the type of reading they are given, and it’s no fun. If all you can do is sound out the word, what do those students who struggle with this do? How do they feel? Will they ever have success with reading, or will they become frustrated and give up before they even start? What if they are looking at the picture, and then someone covers up the picture and tells them to only sound out the word? Imagine how that kid must feel, and how frustrating reading must be for her. How about we teach a few sight words and focus on these strategies first: Point to the words (known as one to one matching). Get your mouth ready. Look at the picture. Is this more authentic reading? Think about yourself as a reader. If there are pictures, do you look at them? Do you enjoy sounding out every single word, or do you use a variety of strategies to figure out unknown words? Model this thinking for your child. Remind her to get her mouth ready and look at the picture. How can you support at home? One of the most important skills for beginning readers is one to one matching. Can your child point to a word, keep her finger on the word, and say the whole word before moving to the next word? Does she know that words are just letters put next to each other, surrounded by white space? If so, she is ready to point and read. If not, start by writing out a sentence from a book, cut up the sentence and have your child put it back together to point and read. Point to the words when you read a story. Ask her to point to a word. Use two fingers to make a “word window” and ask her to put a word window around a word. Keep practicing these skills with books, and point out words all around you. Pretty soon you will have a child who is pointing and reading! Now, I get to brag a bit! My son is 4 years old, and read his first book two weeks ago. Not just memorized the words and recited it, like he did this summer to Richard Scarry’s A Day at the Firehouse, but actually pointed to each word and read it. His teacher had him highlight the sight word “the” during group time, and read it and point to the words. He came home, read it, and pointed to the words. He told me the letters in “the,” and now finds “the” in his reading. However, he got frustrated with me the other night and said, “I don’t want to read all the “the” words!” You can help your child by reminding her of the simple reading strategies and pointing out print all around you. Pretty soon, you’ll have a reader on your hands!
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Recently I tested my fifth graders on the day they returned from a 12 day winter vacation. Am I the meanest teacher ever? Probably! Don’t worry, it didn’t count for a grade. I was trying to prove a point, and I think I hit the nail on the head! Each Tuesday, affectionately known as “Testing Tuesday,” (thanks to Mrs. Moore for the phrase!) is the day when I have students read aloud to me to see if the instruction I am giving is working. Are my students progressing in reading fluency? Is their comprehension improving on short passages? My students have been doing this for so long, that they are smiling on “Testing Tuesday.” However, I changed it to “Testing Monday” on Monday, January 5. I wanted to see if they had actually read over vacation. They started to read the story, and circle the words to complete the sentences. They had three minutes.
Three minutes later, they scored their papers and graphed their results. They all tanked! Not by a few points, some dropped 10 or more points. They were sad and bewildered. Why did I go down? What happened? So, I posed this question: if your score dropped, ask yourself, did I read over vacation? Complete silence. Then the excuses: I had hockey. I forgot. My brother/sister was annoying me. Then, I let them in on my secret rule: you only have to read on days that end with y. They started thinking, and one student said, “But that’s everyday!” Ah! Bingo! Yes, my friends, you need to read every day. This is hard. If you are lucky enough to have a motivated child, she might get up in the morning and start reading. If you have a reluctant child, it might be like pulling teeth! If you don’t have access to books in your house, it makes it even harder. So, how do you get books? You’ve heard the usual suggestions: magazine subscriptions, scour the yard sales, and check out the give away books at the library. If your child is in my school, find the book that the Rotary Club of Lake Placid donated last summer. Each child in my school received a book in June to read and keep! Pull it out and reread it! I was recently told about a free program from Dolly Parton, for children under 5 years of age. If your county participates (and Essex County, NY does), you can sign up and Dolly Parton will send you a book in the mail every month until your child turns 5. If you sign up when you have a newborn, you will end up with 60 books by the time your child is 5! Imagine 60 free books! Not just any book, good quality books. My son’s first book was The Little Engine That Could. Today, he received If I Could Build a Car. It’s very easy to sign up. Go to www.imaginationlibrary.com. Scroll to the bottom of the page and pick your country. Follow the instructions. I had to print out something and send it to the Clinton County Literacy Volunteers (even though I live in Essex county). About a month later, a book arrived. Your best bet, however, is to go to the public library and make it a big deal to get a library card! As soon as your child can write his or her name, head to the library to get a card. We had been going to the library for a few years before my son got his library card this summer. It was a huge deal to write his name in pen on a card. He has a special bag to keep his books in, and we return them and get new ones. Sometimes, we just renew the same books because he loves them so much. As long as he is turning pages and looking at words, it counts! We spend time reading together as a family, every night before bed, and it shows my children that reading is important, and it matters! I know of one parent who read to her children while they were in the bath because they often were running late. Build forts out of blankets and get flashlights to read in the fort. Put on a timer and keep track of the number of pages your child read. Keep a chart of the titles your child read. Find a favorite author or series and ask around for copies of that book. Create a sharing library with your neighbors and trade books. I believe that reading is one of the most important things, and therefore it happens every day. If you want your child to be a better reader, the best thing you can do is read to your child. So, stop by the public library, check out a book, and start reading. Ask your child’s teacher for recommendations for books to read to your child. Pull out your favorites when you were little, and start reading. If you read to your child, and value reading as a family, amazing things will start to happen! If you are a parent of a two year old, you hear those words all the time. Not only are those the words to the beginning of the Richard Scarry’s Busytown Mysteries theme song, but the questions your child asks ALL THE TIME! Why? How does that work? Why? But how? It starts to make you crazy after a while. However, as a reader, these are good things to help you understand the story better.
When good readers read, they ask questions. They ask before they start reading, during the reading, and after the reading. They are constantly questioning the author, and wondering what phrases mean. Good readers are a lot like two year olds; they ask questions because they want to know more. To model this for your child, begin reading a book with a conversation. Yes, before you even start reading, start talking to your child. Say “I wonder…” By saying “I wonder …” before you start reading a book, you are preparing your child to begin thinking, even before the reading starts. I was reading a nonfiction book on rescue vehicles to my four year old the other night. I started out by saying “I wonder what this book will be about. I wonder if the rescue vehicles in this book are the same ones we have in our town.” His response was "I don't know. We have an ambulance like this one at the ambulance garage." I just got him thinking about things before we started reading. As we read, whenever he saw a vehicle that was like the one in our town, he got excited. “We have that pumper truck at the fire house! Daddy’s police car doesn’t look like that! That’s like my airport fire truck Lego set!” He was getting excited about learning new things, and making connections between what he was seeing in the story and things he sees in his daily life. Even at four years old, he understood the story better because we were asking questions about it. When you set up the thinking for your child before and during reading, it helps to guide their thinking. They are listening with a purpose to learn more while they read. My son is very curious. He will often ask "what this mean?" or "what means..." He wants to know the hard words and phrases. He is not content to just sit there and listen; if he doesn't get it, he asks for clarification. I think it's great! Questioning can also happen in fiction stories. You can start asking questions just based on the cover. If you look at Eve Bunting’s Fly Away Home (1991) you might ask are the man and child going on a trip? Why are they dressed alike? What airport is this? As you read further, you discover they aren’t going anywhere, so your questions change. How did they get to the airport? Are they ever going to leave? If you share these questions with your child while you are reading, it will prompt her to begin thinking about other questions she might have, and this will lead to new ideas and deeper understanding of the text. Who, what, why, how? Who, what, when, where, why, how? I know you know the tune! If not, search for it, and you will never forget a question word. So, here’s to acting like a two year old and asking lots of questions! |
AuthorMy name is Laura Coffin, and I am the reading specialist at Lake Placid Elementary School. I have a BA from William Smith College and a M.Ed. in Reading from Lesley University. I also hold a Wilson Language Level I certification. I teach reading, writing and spelling strategies to help all students! Follow me on twitter @lgaetacoffin Archives
December 2017
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