Getting Started...
With the end of summer quickly approaching, teachers have already started the process of readying their classrooms for the upcoming school year. Part of that process is preparing for their very first introduction to the parents of their students at Back-to-School Night.
Many parents believe that this is a night to simply view the inside of their child's classroom and meet the teacher. But is it truly so much more than that! Teachers will often review the curriculum, present behavioral expectations and behavior plans, and communicate important information about the daily schedule. It is an opportunity to learn a tremendous amount about the person with whom your child will be spending 6-7 hours per day, as well as all of the wonderful activities the teacher has planned for the school year. Please make an effort to attend your child's Back to School Night. The teacher has worked hard to prepare an informative presentation that will help you help your child be as successful as possible.
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It is a fact of elementary education that not all children develop the ability to read at the same moment in chronological development. There is a wide range of "normal" when it comes to the acquisition of literacy. Some three- and four-year-olds who have mastered letters and sounds begin to recognize high frequency words and can read simple books. Some children quickly learn early reading skills once they enter kindergarten at the age of five. Other children begin to acquire some early reading skills near the end of kindergarten, closer to the age of six. Still others are not developmentally ready to read until they are nearly seven, sometime during their first grade school year.
Regardless of where on this continuum a child may fall, most do develop on-level reading skills by the end of second grade. There are, however, several flags that may indicate a child needs additional intervention to assist with the development of reading skills. Generally speaking, the following are considered early warning signs of reading difficulties in school age children.
If you are a parent of a school age child who is experiencing difficulty with early literacy skills and exhibits one or more of these warning signs, please make an appointment to meet with your child's teacher, the building principal, or the school's Child Study Team to discuss your concerns. It is also a good idea to mention these issues to your child's pediatrician. Many people understand the importance of reading aloud to a child who cannot yet read to him or herself. We've all heard how critical it is to read to even very young babies. It helps them gain language skills and learn to process how our spoken language sounds. But many parents do not know the critical importance of continuing to read aloud to their children even after those children have gained early literacy skills. They believe that once a child can read by himself, they should be doing that in order to get more reading practice. And while it's true that children who have learned to read, even basic words, should be encouraged to read to an adult some of the time, the adults should also be reading to those children at least as often. Even after learning to read, children continue to gain many skills by listening to adult readers. They hear the emphasis and inflection that practiced readers use when they read. They hear the fluid, even pacing. And they can potentially hear us stumble at times, and then recover. Children need to see this sort of self-correction occur in order to become more proficient self-correctors. Obviously, as children age, the content and complexity of the stories should change. Short picture books, like those written by Dr. Seuss, are best for children in preschool and primary elementary. Chapter books, like the Harry Potter series, may appeal more to older children due to the language and length of the stories. This is not to say that you can't read longer stories to younger children or picture books to older students, but your choices should be based on the child's attention span and interests. Do you remember learning to read? Most adults don't. Despite having gone through the process of learning to read in their own life, most grown-ups cannot recall the experience. I have had many parents be honest enough with me over the years that to admit that they feel frustrated when trying to help their young children learn to read. They can't understand why a child reads a word correctly on one page, but then cannot read it on the next. They have difficulty listening to a child struggle to sound out words that seem so simple. They feel badly for having these feelings, and they try not to show them, but they feel them none the less. First of all, I want to assure you that those feelings of frustration you have when you try to listen to an emerging reader are fairly common. My advice on that front is, when you are feeling frustrated, try taking a break. You may not think that your child cannot detect this frustration, but often, they are aware. Secondly, try to put yourself in your child's shoes for a moment. Take a look at the "sentence" at the top of the index card below. I've given you the key to pronounce each symbol at the bottom. Can you read it? Tricky, huh? Chances are, you were able to read it, but with some difficulty, and obviously using the key at the bottom of the card. For young children, that "key" is the alphabet line in their classroom, with pictures to cue the sounds for each letter. Now, you may be thinking, "Wait, all of the books my kids read have pictures! Where is the picture?" There's the picture. So now think about a child trying to read the sentence above with no key to reference and relying on the picture for help. Is the 5th word bug or ant? Is the last word happy? Quick? Fast? Slow? Without a visual memory of the words, as adults have, early reading can be a slow, labor-intensive process.
So remember - reading is hard. But it also gets easier over time with practice. So encourage your children to read every day, and read to your children every day. And this, too, shall pass. One of the first crucial steps toward independent reading skills is the memorization of what teachers call "sight vocabulary". These are words that must be learned by "sight", or simply memorized rather than decoded or "sounded out". Words like "the" and "of" do not follow the phonics rules that our students learn each day in class. Because they can't sound them out, they must learn them through memorization.
For some children, learning a list of 40 or 50 sight vocabulary words over the course of a year is a simple task, requiring very little extra effort on the part of the parents at home. For others, this task is daunting and requires considerable effort. Here are a few tips to help make the mastery of new sight vocabulary a breeze! 1. Make flashcards for the lists of words sent home from school. The enlarged print on the cards will help some students learn more easily. 2. Never attempt to tackle more than five new words at a time. Start with the five new words on flashcards and practice them several times daily by holding up each card in turn. If the child does not call the word after approximately 3-5 seconds, tell your child the word and move to the next word. At the end of a week, quiz your child on the words. If you child is able to read all five words, add five new words to the stack of cards. If your child masters two words, add two new words to the pile. Continue to practice the entire pile, old and new, each day. 3. Children learn best from a multi sensory approach. By combining a "kinesthetic" experience with the visual card, some students can learn the words more easily. This can include activities like making the words out of clay, writing the words in a thin film of shaving cream on a table, or building the words with magnetic letters on a refrigerator. As long as these activities are guided by an adult or older child who can correct miscalled words, they will be effective in helping the student master new words. While reading aloud to your child can be very beneficial, it is also important that children read aloud to their parents. When children read aloud, they have the opportunity to practice fluency (smooth, steady reading) and can have mistakes immediately corrected by the adults listening to them read. Parents who want to listen to their children read often ask me how to help the student read unknown words. They want to know how much help to give and how to help the child without just giving the unknown word. Here are a few tips to follow:
1. Prompt the child to "sound out" or "stretch" the unknown word. This means asking a child to say each sound they see and blend those sounds together. You can also ask the child to look for a "chunk" of a word they can read, or a little word in the big word that they already know (like finding the word "ant" in the word "Antarctica") 2. Ask the child to skip the word, saying "blank" for the unknown word. Sometimes a child may be able to figure the word out by using the context of the words around it. 3. Tell the child to "get a running start" by reading the words before the unknown word and saying the first sound of the unknown word. If after trying these strategies the child still cannot read the unknown word, it is ok to give the word to your child. Keep in mind that any book that your child is attempting to read independently should be about 98% readable without assistance. For help selecting books on your child's level, please see my other blog posts. One of the most common questions I'm asked as an educator is how parents can help their children learn to read or become better readers. Despite the frequency with which I'm asked this question, I think most parents implicitly know the answer. The best thing a parent can do to help their child with reading skills is to read to or with their child. But what many parents don't know is the correct way to read with their children. I will address this issue in this blog post.
One thing teachers do when they read to children is "think aloud". While adults read, they naturally think about the content and monitor their own thinking, in a process called "metacognition". Children do not do this automatically at first, so it's important that this process is demonstrated. When parents read aloud, they should pause at certain intervals and verbalize their thoughts about the text. For example, after reading a few sentences or paragraphs, the reader should pause to say something like "I wonder why..." or "I'm thinking...", to demonstrate that the reader is, in fact, thinking about what he or she is reading. The reader may question the meaning of a difficult word, or express surprise at the action of a character. "Aha" moments should also be communicated verbally and discussed. Explain why this event in the story surprised you and what you expected to happen instead. This type of verbalization may take a concerted effort for a non-educator at first, but will soon become second nature. Do you have any questions about metacognition? Click on the word "Comments"! Although I've been utilizing technology in my classroom since I started teaching 14 years ago, I've never had a website or a blog. I'm hoping to create blog posts for the parents of my students to help them extend our classroom learning into their homes. I'm excited to provide resources that the parents will be able to use to help them feel more connected to their students' school day. If you have any suggestions as to what sorts of things I should be blogging about, please leave me a comment below or click on the word "comments"!
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AuthorMy name is Jessica Brosnan. I'm about to embark on my 16th year as an elementary school teacher. I spent 11 years as a first grade teacher and the past 3 years as a basic skills instructor. I love children and I love books. I'm in the process of pursuing a degree to become a school library media specialist. ArchivesCategories |