Home Reading Success

Teachers often set up Home Reading programs to help support their students’ learning and to encourage parents to participate in their child’s literacy.   Your child may be already talking about their reading experiences at school and using language that is unfamiliar to you such as predicting, accessing prior knowledge, and making connections, terms teachers use frequently during the reading process. What do these words mean and how can you, as a parent and caregiver, help your child in the reading process?

Although sounding out words is an important skill, good reading goes far beyond that. There are many other components to teaching reading. A strong reader will have excellent decoding skills and comprehension.

I will explain some of the processes your child may be doing in language arts during a reading activity and why it is important to the reading process.

Tee12Accessing prior knowledge

  • Students are often asked about what they already know about the title and picture of the book before beginning to read. This helps the students recall facts that they already know before reading so that meaning can be added upon. It is just like us getting all the materials ready before cooking. It prepares us.

Tee13Predicting

  • Sometimes, at the end of a page or chapter, the reader is left wondering what will happen next. Predicting is using clues in what already been read to try to find out what will happen next. As long as it is a possible event based on what has already occurred in the story, there is no right or wrong answers to predictions. I love asking students “what do you think will happen next?” It gives them the chance to use their imagination. It also allows me to see how well they have understood the story so far and to praise their creativity and imagination and tell them that they could be authors as their ideas could have worked in the story too.
  • Predictions, especially with younger students, can also be made from the title and cover of the book as well as the illustrations. This strategy also helps students make good choices when choosing books independently.

Tee14Making Connections

  • Students are often asked to link what they are reading to something that they have already read or experienced. These connections help students to personalize the text and to remember what they have just read. For example, think about how we, as adults, explain to someone else how to find a place. We connect the place to another point of reference (the world) so that meaning is made. “The pool is right beside the community centre.”

Big Idea or Author’s Message

  • After reading a book, students are sometimes asked to find the big idea or the author’s message of the story. This is quite a complex task for young students as it is usually not stated in the book itself. Finding the big idea of the story asks your child to think critically to figure out what was the point of the book and why it is important.

Tee15As you can see, all of these processes help your child deepen his/her understanding of what is being read. Readers need to anchor what they are reading to what they already know in order for new facts to be remembered.

I cannot begin to express my gratitude to all the parents and caregivers out there. You are truly your child’s first and lifelong teacher. It has been said that it takes a village to raise a child. The same hold true for educating a child.

Written by Sandra Tee, primary teacher

Edited and Revised by Lindsay DeLair, teacher librarian

Clip art taken with permission from http://teachers.wrdsb.ca/shouftas/language/#contact