Do you love reading as a pleasurable, down-time activity?

Do you have a list of books to read that will take at least two lifetimes to complete?

The importance of regular modelling of reading by all us, parents and teachers, cannot be taken too lightly.  The children are looking to us to see if we place a high value on reading through our words and actions.

Last week we wrote about creating a home environment that places reading as a priority to foster a love of reading and literature in our children.

As teachers, our students see us reading a lot.  From the attendance form to story time books, teaching books to charts and labels, our students see us doing a great deal of purposeful reading in our day.

Here are some things we think about as we are reading to and with our students that you can do during your own daily reading with your Kindergarten child at home.

Reading to Your Child

• Fluency.  As teachers and parents, we want to read aloud the story as fluently as possible.  We get a lot of practise with some of the favourite read-alouds we’ve read to students many times over the years.  However, when we can, we still read new stories to ourselves first before reading them aloud to the children.  Of course, this is more difficult when you are reading longer texts and novels but for picture books with a lot of dialogue, we want to get the intonation of the character voices “just right.”

• Expression. Demonstrate your interest, enjoyment and enthusiasm in your children’s selected storybook, and you can make even the most banal of words sparkle with excitement for them.  We really try to have fun with the character voices in a book, and take a great deal of delight in the children’s laughter (sometimes we are laughing so hard at our own reading we have to stop the story…really!). After all, who doesn’t love creating the Wolf’s voice as Grandma in “Little Red Riding Hood”?

Reading With Your Child

• Take a “book walk” with your child before reading a new book.  Ensure that your child can see the pages, and that you have one hand free to “track” the text (point to the words) as you are reading and to focus on key details in the pictures which may aid in your child’s comprehension of the story.

• Draw attention to the title of the story by helping your child find the front cover of the book.  Point out the differences between the front and back covers.

• Make predictions about what the story will be about based on the title.

• Look at the author’s and illustrator’s names and discuss the differences in their roles, in addition to their names.  Make connections by trying to think of books you’ve already read by them, or anyone you know who has those names.

• Comment on the title page and the dedication page.  Speculate on who the people mentioned in the dedication might be.

• Gradually develop your child’s awareness of where stories start (Where is the first word on this page?) and which way the print goes (Show me which way you read; Show me where we read next).

Interacting With the Print

Drawing attention to the print should be an incidental, rather than a continuous activity.  In other words, it’s not necessary to use all of these suggestions each time you read a story; instead, just pick and choose what you and your child enjoy most.

• The beginning and endings of the story, eg., most Fairy Tales begin with “Once upon a time….” and end with “…and they all lived happily ever after.”

• Unusual print in the story, eg., words in upper letters (BOOM!); words in speech clouds (speaking aloud) or thinking bubbles (silent thoughts); animal sounds (Woof, Meow, Mooooo).

• Names and names of places, eg., all start with an uppercase letter.

• Repetitive words, eg., “Sometimes it looked like a Rabbit.  But it wasn’t a Rabbit./Sometimes it looked like a Bird.  But it wasn’t a Bird.” (From It Looked Like Spilt Milk, by Charles G, Shaw)

• Rhyming words, eg., “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.“

Encourage Your Child to Participate in the Reading

You can encourage your child to participate in the story by:

• Pausing at certain points to enjoy the rhythm of the language, admire a beautiful picture or count the number of times the “Letter of the Week” occurs on a page.

• Being careful to read aloud at a pace that allows for your child’s participation.

• Engaging in “echo reading,” eg., you read a phrase or sentence and your child repeats it, or your child completes the next rhyming word or line (we use this second idea a lot with rhyming text in class).

• Taking turns to read the character’s dialogue, eg., sharing the Wolf’s big scene, “The better to hear/see/eat you with” in “Little Red Riding Hood.”

• Giving your child the opportunity to “read” as much of the story as possible, particularly repetitive text or dialogue, eg., Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle).

• Praising any participation in “reading” the story by your child.

• Enjoying the cozy time you have spent together, parents and child, reading aloud a great book.

Source:  “Language and Literacy in the Primary Years,” A Parents’ Information Booklet from Ridgeview Elementary (1997/98).  Updated by The Self-Regulated Teacher at theselfregulatedteacher.wordpress.com (2015).

A few weeks ago we started a Home Reading Program for our Kindergarten classes.

It’s just a simple program of emergent books and readers, where the children independently select a book to take home to read with their parents three times a week.   We have our book exchange during Centre time.  We call the children over to choose their book by our “bookkeeping” method of the ziploc bags where we’ve written their names and keep the individual books.  After the children select their new book and put it into the ziploc, they place the book inside their backpacks to go home.

Home Reading is a fun opportunity for our students to read aloud books appropriate for their reading level to their parents. But it’s not meant to replace the nightly bedtime story.

The cozy and comforting routine of a bedtime story is one of our strongest memories. We still have our childhood books: volumes of Mother Goose nursery rhymes, Fairy Tales, Just So Stories and Nancy Drew Mysteries; our favourite books include Anne of Green Gables, The Secret Garden, Little Women and Alice in Wonderland.

When our own children were born, reading the bedtime story was something we were so looking forward to doing. We were collecting storybooks to read aloud to our classes, and now we would also be able to share them with our children.

So what can you do to support your child’s love of reading and literature?

Create an atmosphere for reading at home

Books should have a place of their own at home, and be accessible at all times. Part of teaching your children to be a good reader and book lover is showing them how to care for books.  At school we have insisted on careful and respectful behaviour towards books.

• Pick up a book carefully in one hand, or both hands if it’s a bigger book
• Close the book when you are finished reading
• Hold the book with both hands against your chest when walking with it
• Put the book back on the shelf or book rack, right side up and cover facing out

Selecting books. When selecting a book, the most important thing is will your child enjoy it? Introduce new books regularly to your child. If your child has not already signed up for a membership at the Public Library in your community, now is the time. The Kindergarten children have been well taught by our Teacher-Librarian, and are able to conduct themselves appropriately in the library. This includes independently choosing a book.

Have a regular time and place for reading. Routines help us to get things done, and if it’s followed enough times it can, and will, become a good habit. For your nightly read-aloud, pick a time when you are ready to enjoy a story with your child. Many families read a story just before the children go to sleep in their beds. In our homes we sat on the sofa, with a child and book on each side. The bedtime story has to be a priority, more important than checking a Facebook newsfeed or watching “Sports Centre.” Being “present” with your child, enjoying one another’s company with a good story will make reading time very special for parent and child.

Regular modelling of reading by parents and older members of the household is essential. How do you see the role of reading in your life? To foster a love of reading, your children need to see you reading:   books, magazines, newspapers, recipes, comics and even work related documents. A lot of reading seems to be done via a personal digital device these days which is okay, but if you want your kids to read print, then that’s what they need to see you doing.

Choose books of different genres, such as Fairy Tales, poetry, wordless books, non-fiction animal books; and themes such as “Growing Up,” “Families,” holidays, personal interests and hobbies. Reading books of various lengths also teaches young readers that a powerful message or lesson doesn’t always need to be told through a long story.

At this early stage, most children are attracted to picture books or beginning chapter books which will need to be read aloud by you. These books can and should be above the children’s independent reading level. The books you are reading aloud will have the rich, diverse vocabulary and more complex sentence structure that will benefit your child’s oral vocabulary.

Finding books for your beginning reader to read independently is harder; that is how the home reading program tries to bridge the gap as we have access to the “little books” with simple vocabulary, predictable patterns and repetitive, rhythmic and rhyming language. Ask your community librarian to help you find books with these same characteristics at your local library.

We’ve written before that books are a gift that can be opened again and again. Why not consider establishing some new traditions around books like a special hardback book for each birthday with a special inscription from you? Instead of a big chocolate treat for Valentine’s Day or Easter give the joy of a beautiful book which will last so much longer, and just a small chocolate goodie. Suggest to friends and relatives that they also might give books as presents.

Our own children are teenagers now and moving into their senior years at high school this fall. Although we don’t read aloud stories or novels to them anymore, as families we still speak fondly of memories about books read aloud in the past.

Books, laughter, love…we’d call that some serious family bonding time.

Next week we’ll discuss reading to and with your child, and offer some suggestions on what you can do to encourage literacy awareness at home.

Source: “Language and Literacy in the Primary Years,” A Parents’ Information Booklet from Ridgeview Elementary (1997/98). Updated by The Self-Regulated Teacher at theselfregulatedteacher.wordpress.com (2015).