What questions can I ask my child when listening to him or her read at home?
1. Talk about new words in the story.
2. Have your child retell the story in his or her own words.
3. Ask your child, "What do you think might happen next?"
4. Talk about the characters, places, and events in the book.
5. Talk about the pictures in the book.
6. When reading an informational book, ask your child, "What new information did you
learn from this book?"
What reading strategies do you teach?
Skilled readers do not use only one strategy when they read. They combine a number of strategies to get maximum comprehension of a book. Below are some of the strategies I teach. There is no order for the teaching of these strategies.
* Students are taught to use a variety of fix-up strategies to help read unfamiliar words and to help them understand the meaning of the word.
* Before reading a book, we talk about what the student already knows about the subject to access their prior knowledge. While we are reading, students learn to make connections. Students can make personal connections, connections to other books they have read, and connections to the world around them.
* Retelling the story in their own words helps students learn what is most important in the story.
* Students learn to summarize a small section in as few words as possible., This allows students to sort out the main ideas from the less important details of the book.
* In class we take time to ask questions before, during, and after reading a book. Asking questions helps students examine what they don't know.
* Students learn to visualize the story. It is important for students to think about what happens when reading and create pictures in their minds. It helps to "see" something in your mind in order to understand it.
* Before, during, and after reading students learn to infer and predict information. Students use clues from the pictures or words in the story to help them figure out what will happen next or what they will learn.
* Every now and then students stop reading and think about the information from the book. This gives students time to form opinions, develop new ideas, and change predictions.
Why do you send home easy books?
Reading a book over again or reading an easier book helps students learn to read words rapidly and accurately. When students read with fluency, they are able to spend more energy focusing on comprehending the story.
Reading an easier book also helps students read phrases or group words together for more fluent reading. This allows the student to read at a good rate.
How do students read punctuation?
Remember to make sure your child stops reading at a period, question mark, or exclamation point. Combining two sentences or stopping in the middle of a sentence can change the meaning. A student might see a long sentence and lose the meaning by the end of it. Rereading the sentence might show punctuation patterns such as commas or quotation marks that aid in understanding the longer sentence.
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