As we all know, parents are our first teachers. As such, parent education is an important part of supporting all students, and especially those with special learning needs. There is arguably no more important skill in school and life than the ability to read, yet it is so much more than "calling words", which is the easiest indicator for parents to measure. Yet, good readers are doing so much more than calling words. They are thinking. I love the unit our second grade does at the beginning of the year called "Readers are Thinkers" because it explicitly teaches students that reading is a deep and complicated process and they make visible that process.
Our early childhood English as an Additional Language teacher Joanna Moffett and I are were talking about how important conversation regarding what we read is key for developing strong reading and thinking skills that kids will need to be successful. We decided to do a parent coffee that would highlight the ways that parents could model and practice these higher level comprehension and thinking skills with their kids at home. We then enlisted the help of our Literacy Specialist, James Ebert, who has done similar parent education at other schools when he taught kindergarten.
Prior to the presentation on April 1, we recorded two examples of parents reading with their child, one in a late kindergarten level, and one at a late second grade or early third grade level. In the first video, we modeled a picture walk and all the discussion that happens during this process, building the vocabulary the students will encounter in the book. We noted that one could do this in your mother tongue and then connect it to the English vocabulary, thus strengthening both languages in the process. You can see in the video (below in the linked slideshow) some ways to support kids when they encounter difficult words, but the focus is on the conversation and thinking about the book.
In the second video, you again see some examples of how you can help problem solve difficult words with older readers, but more importantly, one can see how long and how in depth the conversation about just two pages of reading can be. Parents can model their own connections and questions and scaffold deeper thinking about what they have read together.
The final point we made in the presentation was the importance of continuing to read to your child, not just with your child, even after they are proficient readers. You should read books to your child that are about two grade levels above their current reading level. The reason for this is that you can expose you child to a wider variety of genres and more complicated text and story structures. This builds their listening vocabulary which builds their speaking, and then reading and writing, vocabulary. It also gives you an opportunity to discuss the story and themes with your child and thus build and scaffold their comprehension and thinking skills. It might also lead to questions that could guide inquiry into a new topic.
Most importantly, we stressed that home reading should be enjoyable. Parents should model and share their own love of reading with their kids to help develop and foster a skill and an interest that will help them to be lifelong readers.
In talking with parents after, the most powerful part for many of them was seeing the videos. As teachers, we tell parents what they can do when reading with their kids and assume they know what we are suggesting. However, without the context that we as educators have, it was clear that some didn't know what it could look like in action. This was an important realization for me and I will try to be more mindful of this in the future.
Below is a link to the slides from the presentation. You can click on the videos to view the techniques we modeled and discussed. You can also find links to useful resources for finding books kids will like, books online, and research about reading.
Reading with your Child at Home
Our early childhood English as an Additional Language teacher Joanna Moffett and I are were talking about how important conversation regarding what we read is key for developing strong reading and thinking skills that kids will need to be successful. We decided to do a parent coffee that would highlight the ways that parents could model and practice these higher level comprehension and thinking skills with their kids at home. We then enlisted the help of our Literacy Specialist, James Ebert, who has done similar parent education at other schools when he taught kindergarten.
Prior to the presentation on April 1, we recorded two examples of parents reading with their child, one in a late kindergarten level, and one at a late second grade or early third grade level. In the first video, we modeled a picture walk and all the discussion that happens during this process, building the vocabulary the students will encounter in the book. We noted that one could do this in your mother tongue and then connect it to the English vocabulary, thus strengthening both languages in the process. You can see in the video (below in the linked slideshow) some ways to support kids when they encounter difficult words, but the focus is on the conversation and thinking about the book.
In the second video, you again see some examples of how you can help problem solve difficult words with older readers, but more importantly, one can see how long and how in depth the conversation about just two pages of reading can be. Parents can model their own connections and questions and scaffold deeper thinking about what they have read together.
The final point we made in the presentation was the importance of continuing to read to your child, not just with your child, even after they are proficient readers. You should read books to your child that are about two grade levels above their current reading level. The reason for this is that you can expose you child to a wider variety of genres and more complicated text and story structures. This builds their listening vocabulary which builds their speaking, and then reading and writing, vocabulary. It also gives you an opportunity to discuss the story and themes with your child and thus build and scaffold their comprehension and thinking skills. It might also lead to questions that could guide inquiry into a new topic.
Most importantly, we stressed that home reading should be enjoyable. Parents should model and share their own love of reading with their kids to help develop and foster a skill and an interest that will help them to be lifelong readers.
In talking with parents after, the most powerful part for many of them was seeing the videos. As teachers, we tell parents what they can do when reading with their kids and assume they know what we are suggesting. However, without the context that we as educators have, it was clear that some didn't know what it could look like in action. This was an important realization for me and I will try to be more mindful of this in the future.
Below is a link to the slides from the presentation. You can click on the videos to view the techniques we modeled and discussed. You can also find links to useful resources for finding books kids will like, books online, and research about reading.
Reading with your Child at Home