From Kimberly L. Keith,Your Guide to Parenting of K-6 Children.
Ideas and Activities to Build Comprehension
Parents can build their very young child's comprehension during story time with the strategies of elaboration and questions. Take your time as you read a picture book to your child. Talk about what is happening in the story. Relate the pictures to the story. Ask questions about what might be coming next, what the character is feeling, what your child thinks about the character's actions. Relate the story to events in the child's life. By doing so, you make a story personal so that the child thinks about the story as you are reading.
Comprehension integrates the other skills of reading - word recognition, fluency, vocabulary - so that by the middle elementary grades, the child has moved from learning to read to reading to learn. If any of the other reading skills are weak, then comprehension will be lower and achievement in later grades will be more difficult.
But, older kids can still learn comprehension strategies that will help them read to learn and continue to become better readers.
The latest research in reading comprehension finds that even beginning readers can learn strategies to improve comprehension. As you practice reading with your children at home, try these comprehension-building strategies.
When Choosing a Book...
Pick a book that has a topic that is familiar to your child - sports, students, sisters and brothers, school, something that he can relate to and for which he has some life experience or knowledge.
Before Reading a Book...
Have your child handle it, flip through it, find the title, the author, the illustrator. Read the table of contents. Look at the pictures. Ask, "What do you think this book is about?"
As You Read...
You may be reading to the child or practicing paired reading. Stop at natural points in the reading and check the child's comprehension. Ask questions such as "Where are they? What just happened? How would you feel if someone did that? Do you know anyone like that? What do you think will happen next?" You can change the questions depending on the type of material you are reading. But, the point of the questions should be to
monitor your child's comprehension of the text; relate the meaning of the text to their own knowledge and experience; predict and prepare to comprehend the next section of the text.
If while monitoring, your child can't answer a question correctly, then go back and read again to find the answer. To prevent frustration, only reread a section once and then give him a clue from the text to answer correctly. Don't get too bogged down; if you are, the text may be too difficult for your child.
By following these simple strategies consistently with your child, you are teaching the skills that excellent readers use every time they read. They form the basis for reading to learn in the later grades, when the child will learn to skim for chapter and heading titles, graphics and text structure; predict what the text will be about and have a goal for reading the material;
relate the material to their own knowledge and experience; visualize the setting, characters, and action while reading; interact with text through questioning and monitoring their understanding of the material; identify the main points and summarize the meaning of text.
Summertime Reading
By Cathy Puett Miller
We all know that summer reading is good for kids. Without it, experts say, reading skills can decrease. Encourage parents to include reading in their summer plans, and help them keep their kids reading by making summertime reading different than “that stuff I do at school."
Share with parents these “outside the box" ideas:
Read about your vacation destination before you go.
Read about something you want to do together (hiking, planting a garden, working on motorcycles).
Turn off the TV and substitute one half hour of reading or a visit to the library.
Save your pennies (everyone empties change into a jar). When you save enough, stop by a local bookstore for a treat.
Put a reading reminder on your “adult" calendar (but don’t let the kids know!)
Read a book about local history and go to a museum.
Read a book that’s now a movie, and then take them to see the movie!
Host a potluck mid-summer party at your house or a local park. Pull out a book or two to read in the shade after dinner, or tell stories around the campfire.
Use reading as a way to reconnect with your kids. Talking about a story is still one of the best ways to open doors that might be closed when schedules are hectic.
Teachers try this: Let kids choose two books to read with their families during the summer. At open house, when families visit the school, invite parents to take the Accelerated Reader or Scholastic Reading Counts test with their kids watching!
Virginia Meldrum, director of The Owl’s Tree “Authors in the Schools" program, says keep it simple. Help parents tap into the joy, discovery and exploration of reading. “The worst we can do is force children to read something they ‘should’." Her advice: Help parents see how to make reading fun.
Targeting National and State Standards with Picture Books
By Cathy Puett Miller
Children’s picture books can be used effectively to teach many of the core standards. No matter which grade you teach, magically-woven stories by creative authors is a key to motivating learners.
Teaching about story elements? Try:
Today I Feel Silly and Other Moods That Make My Day, by Jamie Lee Curtis (characterization)
Covered Wagons, Bumpy Roads, by Kay Verla (setting)
Stellaluna, by Janell Cannon (plot)
Teaching writing? Try:
A Bad Case of the Stripes, by David Shannon (strong word choice)
The Day Gogo Went to Vote, by Elinor Sisulu (personal narrative)
Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak (story organization)
Teaching genres of literature? Try:
When Jesse Came Across the Sea, by Amy Hest (historical fiction)
My Great Aunt Arizona, by Gloria Houston, (poetry)
The Three Little Pigs, by Paul Galzone, and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, by Jon Scieska (fairytales)
My Brother Martin: A Sister Remembers Growing up with the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., by Christine King Farras (biography)
The beautiful illustrations and limited text in picture books allow both student and teacher to concentrate on language, message and appeal. Picture books can also be usedas group read-alouds for pleasure. (Poof!, By John O’Brien) and to support learning in content areas. For cultural studies, read various versions of the Cinderella tale from different countries. Note differences in culture and similarities in story. A list of versions of this well-known story can be found at Cinderella Stories.
To introduce complex content area issues such as civil rights (Goin’ Someplace Special, by Patricia McKissick) or science (Fireworks, by Vicki Cobb).
Explore the potential in your favorite picture books. You can reinforce rhyming, sentence structure, parts of speech, prediction, and questioning. I guarantee any standard you pull, there’s a picture book tailor-made to teach it!
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