For the Week of May 3rd

How to Improve Reading Rate

I was just reading an article in the Reading Teacher journal which reminded me of what I have learned over the years. For those students who struggle with slow, labored reading, reading many books at their comfort level is a key to helping them read faster. If you think about it this way - when adults try to master something they usually take it slowly, in small learnable units. For example, when learning to dance, you start with a few basic steps and progress slowly as those steps are mastered. You don't start out with the hardest dances until you master the easier ones. The same holds true with cooking. You don't start with a 12 course meal. You start with making simple dishes and slowly work towards increasing complexity. Children need a lot of reading of texts which are a great deal of fun to them and which come easily to them. A child begins to dislike reading if they are continually forced to read books which are too difficult for them. So for independent reading, choose books that are easy for your child to read. When partner reading with you, books can be a little more challenging because you can tell your child the unknown words.

For the Week of April 26th

Lexia

I would be interested to hear from those who have started to use Lexia at home. How is it going? Does your student enjoy doing Lexia? Please email me with anything you would like to share. If you want to talk in person, please email me and I will phone you.

For those who have not signed up for Lexia but would like to, email me and I will get the information to your child.

Make Reading Fun

Nothing motivates children and adults alike more than fun. Since our goal is to make life-long readers out of our children, I would encourage you, as parents, to take the time to make reading a fun activity. Figure out the types of books your child really enjoys. Make plans to do fun activities centered around those books. When my children were younger, we would read books as a family that we knew were coming out as movies. Then we would go see the movie so that we could compare and contrast it with the book. Many little girls enjoy having a tea party. Invite over a friend or have a teddy bear join the party and then have your child or you read a good book while the others are enjoying their "tea." Get creative and have fun with reading.

For the Week of April 19th

Earth Day

Prairieview is celebrating Earth Day on Friday the 23rd. Everyone should wear their Earth Day t-shirts or green. For those who are packing their lunches, pack trashless ones. If you are able, walk or ride your bike to school that day.

Retelling

One of the best ways to find out if your child is understanding what he/she is reading is to ask them to tell you what they just read. Retelling helps students to clarify their thinking and remember what they read. It also helps them to internalize the new vocabulary that they are learning. For reluctant readers, it encourages them to actually read if they know that they are going to be asked to retell what they read. I encourage you to take a few extra minutes to listen to your child. He/she will benefit greatly from the extra attention.

For the Week of April 12th

Vocabulary - Lessen the Gap

I just finished attending Core Reading Academy. The instructor in this academy spent five days discussing what a robust reading curriculum should include. One whole day was spent on vocabulary instruction. Our instructor pointed out that children come to school having a wide range of vocabulary abilities. There are huge gaps between various students. As the students grow older, many times the gap continues to widen. She told us that there are four parts to an effective vocabulary program. Students need instruction in specific words to enhance the comprehension of texts containing those words. They need instruction in independent word-learning strategies and they need word consciousness and word-play activities to motivate and enhance their learning. They also need a lot of independent reading to expand their word knowledge. Students needs to know many, many more words than teachers have the time to teach in the classroom. One of the ways students learn the words they need to know is by doing a lot of outside reading. This reading can be on their own or they can be read to. I want to encourage parents to continue to read to their children for as long as they can. The vocabulary benefits that children receive are enormous. If, for some reason, you can't spend time reading to your children, consider getting them books on CD's to listen to. By listening to books that are written at a higher level than they can read easily, their vocabularies increase and that helps them to be able to read those words with understanding in the future. The more time your children spend reading and listening to books read to them, the greater their vocabularies will be.