Fill Your House With All the Books…
Don’t let the crazy characters and the whimsical rhymes fool you! Dr. Seuss knew what he was talking about! Two of his most famous quotes about reading and literacy are "Fill your house with stacks of books, in all the crannies and all the nooks" and "The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more you learn, the more places you'll go."
At Inman Primary, we LOVE Dr. Seuss, we LOVE reading and we are working hard every day! We know that we must build strong and positive relationships with students and families so that we can build strong readers. We want to work with families to support them in building a successful school experience. Inman Primary school staff fully understand that families are a child’s first teacher and that we can gain meaningful details about how to build success through valuable relationships.
We have many families reach out to us for help in assisting their children in reading and overall literacy development. There are many strategies and activities that can be done at home to continually build on children’s literacy skills. Here are a few:
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Read as an adult!Model for your youngster that reading is fun and informational. Share with your child that you are continually learning about new topics from what you have read.
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Read with your youngster regularly! Understand that you don’t have to dedicate 45 minutes a night to reading with your child. Even 10-15 minutes each day with your child creates opportunities for them to love books, and of course the time you spend with them.
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Read it AGAIN! There are many times that your child may be begging for the favorite story to be read one more time and to you this may seem mundane. To your child, there are opportunities to visualize, predict and make connections to something that has been a good experience. Read it again…and again, and… again!
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Talk about what you have read! If you are in the car and you see a “scene” that connects to something you have read, share that with your child. If you can connect one of their experiences to something a character in their book has experiences, share this with them.
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Be Creative! Your child is ready and willing to invent new characters, events, endings, etc to their favorite books. Have them write their own story about something that interests them.
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Connect to the internet for many more ideas and resources to help develop young children in to avid readers. This is an expert from the www.readingrockets.org website about fluency.
Fluency: What is it? Why is it important?
If someone is fluent in speaking another language or in playing an instrument, there's a smooth, graceful and easy quality to it. The same is true with reading skills. Reading fluency is a child's ability to read a book or other text correctly, quickly, and with expression. A fluent reader doesn't have to stop and "decode" each word. Rather, most of the words can be read automatically. This means the reader can focus his attention on what the story or text means. For that reason, fluency is critically important — it is the bridge between decoding words and understanding what has been read.
How can we foster reading fluency?
Parents can help their child develop reading fluency through a few simple and fun activities.
Paired or "Buddy" Reading
The easiest and best way to help your child develop fluency is to sit with your child and read! Read together every day, which is often called paired or buddy reading. To use paired reading, simply take turns reading aloud. You go first, as your reading provides a model of what good fluent reading sounds like. Then, ask your child to re-read the same page you just read. You'll notice that your child's reading will start to sound more and more like yours. Do this for several pages. Once your child is comfortable enough, and familiar enough with the book, take turns reading page for page.
Reread Favorite Books
Another way parents can help develop fluency is to build a tall stack of books that your child can read quickly and easily. Encourage your child to reread favorite books over and over again. With each reading, you may notice your child reading a bit easier, a bit faster, and with a bit more confidence and expression.
Record It
Another fun way to practice reading and build fluency is to have your child create her own audio books. This can be done simply with a tape recorder or audio recording feature or app (like Audioboo) on your phone. Or, use something more sophisticated like StoryKit, where a user can create an electronic storybook and record audio to accompany it. Regardless of the method you choose, your child will be practicing what they want to record and that reading practice is critical. Sharing your audio recordings with family and friends is a great motivator too!
These activities are easy and require very few materials. Doing these activities with your child will help build fluency — a skill that will last a lifetime.
So, in closing, please know that we are eager to be a partner in your child’s literacy and learning journey. Learning to read is a complex process. Learning to love to read is something that the Inman Primary Staff want to experience and create for all children and share with families. And, one more important quote from our friend Dr. Seuss, “You're never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read to a child. “