Strategies for Home Reading with A Child - What Makes Sense for a Parent?

"Reading can be a very fraught topic for parents, teachers and students...At its heart, reading is a way to access stories, which in turn make readers wonder about the world. In the race to get kids reading, it can be easy to treat reading like a procedure, instead of the complicated experience that it is."- Katrina Schwartz

I have begun exploring the phenomenon of 'home reading' in this blog (see previous entries: Snapshot: How Home Reading Became One More Thing on the 'To Do List' for Families (Sept. 8, 2019)  and What Do Parents Need to Notice and Know about Home Reading? (Sept. 15, 2019). Hopefully, they will help families support this enormously important and relatively untapped resource for supporting the development of lifelong, successful readers.

Parents who understand the expectations of their child's school related to home reading, and have explored the nature of book-finding and reading already established in their homes, have cleared the first hurdle in supporting the development of an avid, successful reader. They are ready to launch the home reading program, and are now faced with questions related to 'What do I now?  What does reading at home with my child look and sound like in actual fact?' or something similar. 

The 'what do I do now?' questions may quickly sink the best of intentions for supporting home reading if they are not answered and incorporated into the home routines appropriately - pushing kids to read without fully considering who they are in advance can lead to frustrations and arguments that may set a negative tone for parents or children that permeates and impacts reading experiences of children well into the future. But it doesn't have to be that way!

Some of the 'what do I do now?' responses are dependent upon the age and previous reading history of the child. Younger children with limited book reading experiences (either read aloud or independent 'reading' of texts) will look and sound quite different from children with established reading routines already. Either way, a good starting question for a parent might be 'How does my child respond during a read aloud experience?' If a child sits quietly and listens, asks questions or interrupts with stories, laughter, questions, etc, then s/he is already demonstrating keen interest in connecting with stories. If they are identifying words they recognize or pointing out particular parts of text (such as a ?) they are demonstrating they are ready to dive into reading with some awareness of text features already under their belts. Let's start with a very basic, not particularly engaged with reading child who may sit willingly for a bit but has not really shown any great interest in learning to read so far.

And, before we go any further, let's state the two DON'Ts for reading with children - not during home reading, choice of read aloud time, or any other time:

                           #1 - Don't cover up the pictures while reading books

                          #2 - Don't insist on accuracy of reading text every time -
                                   the ultimate goal of all reading is comprehension.

Strategies for children with limited read aloud experiences are intended to get the child interested in reading:

•     encourage your child to choose a book (maybe offer 2 or 3 titles initially)
•     ask: What do you think this story will be about? Talk with them about their ideas - why? 
•    have your child hold the book, as they open it you might read the title aloud, pointing to the words; when the inside title appears, begin to read it again and pause to see if the child picks up on the title; if not, continue reading and pointing to the words 
• when your child turns to the first page of text, ask 'where do you think we should start reading?' and have her point to that spot (hopefully the first word on the left hand side of the page; if not, simply put your finger there and say something like 'here's a good starting spot')
•  read through the text aloud with your child, pausing to let your child show you in the pictures what you are reading - feel free to prompt with questions like "where is that happening in this picture?" or even just words like 'Really? That happened?' or something similar to get the child looking at the picture and making connections to your words
• point to each word as you read
• if your child interrupts to tell you something about the story - a word, a picture, a connection to another story, etc - pause and listen; affirm the connection, point to it with them, read on
• when you have finished the story, read it again ('I enjoyed that story! Let's read that again!') 
• through the second reading, pause 3 or 4 times to see if your child is able to follow through on thoughts and ideas from the story; if they are not jumping in with words or ideas from the story, just continue with reading to them 
• record the reading of the book on the home reading journal if needed; if not, make note of it on an informal reading chart you can make yourself with your child - this helps affirm they are a 'reader'
• talk about the book briefly: 'my favourite part of this story was.....What was your favourite part? I couldn't believe it when....., etc'
• read the book at home at least two nights before returning it to school - the objective here is to create memories of texts so if you can keep it for a few weeks, do so
• if your child wants, they might draw a picture from the story as a memory hook
• or offer them the opportunity to print out their favourite word on a card you can attach to the fridge or a bulletin board in their room - a place to capture favourite words is always a good idea for future review
• continue to build a collection of 'favourite stories' your child has chosen and become familiar with at home 

 Another idea for very young children is to post pictures/illustrations of animals or everyday items at a low level around your house (eg. on lower kitchen cupboards) children can identify. Words can be added to support building connections between items and labels and to develop a sight vocabulary. And color words can be added beneath pictures of particular items - written in their own colour would be additionally helpful.

The initial goal of home reading is to build familiarity with text in a non-threatening, welcoming environment. These strategies for early readers are just a few to get started with but will lay an important bedrock for becoming avid, successful readers at home.  

Next week we will visit strategies for supporting readers who are deliberately using text cues independently.

Lorraine Kinsman, Principal