5 Ways to Enhance Your Littlest Reader's Book Knowledge During Read Alouds

Hi Readers,

I have to admit, this post was inspired by my own busy life and that of other busy parents! Whether you work outside of the home, in the home, or have been able to devote your time to be a full-time SAHM, there never seem to be enough hours in the day to teach our little ones all the things they need to know. Picking up Charlotte from day care at 4:30 (if Houston traffic allows), and then getting her home to eat dinner, practice walking and other gross motor activities, and play, we are lucky if we get to a really good quality read aloud every day during the work week without her getting too crabby. I therefore thought it would be useful to come up with 5 tips for busy parents to help them make the most out of their read aloud time with their little ones. 

Why Read Daily?

To start with, much of the research suggests that as early as six months, babies have the capacity to concentrate and focus long enough to read a book. I, however, find that babies are never too young to be read to (Charlotte was first introduced to Five Little Monkeys in utero by my husband after all!)! Any type of read aloud that you have with your little one is beneficial to not only their reading skills, but also their positive feelings toward reading and books that can affect them for the rest of their lives. By further targeting your read aloud with your little ones, you can even help to start them out for PreK and Kindergarten readiness in multiple areas. With the importance of reading daily fresh in our minds, we can now delve into the 5 ways to enhance your little one's book knowledge during this precious reading time you share together.

5 Ways to Enhance Your Littlest Reader's Book Knowledge

1. Point out the text features.

When our little ones are first entering school, teachers start to assess them on how they understand the concepts of print. Basically, what this means is teachers check if they know the front and back covers of a book, where the title and the author and illustrator are, and which direction to read a story. As you're sitting down with your little one, make sure to mention or talk through these features with them.

"Look, Charlotte, this is the front cover of the book, and these words are the title. Mommy is underlining the title. The book is by Dr. Seuss, that's the person who wrote the book. See his name right there?"

Giving your child this vocabulary, and having her practice pointing to the different items to locate the items herself will really give her a leg up on those early assessments, and it will help her to learn more about the structure of a book.

You can also have your child practice opening a book correctly. For example, give it to him upside-down, and see if he can turn it around and open it right-side up. "Whoops! Mommy can't remember how to open the book! Can you show her?"

**Fun fact: it only seems to be socially acceptable to refer to yourself in the third person if you're a parent or a teacher. Could you imagine if other people did it? (Just a little laugh!)**

2. Trace the text, and call your child's attention to it.

It may sound surprising, but some children simply don't notice the text in the story, because they are so excited about the pictures. In fact, if you think about it, there is text all around our children all the time, signs, billboards, TV ads, books, etc., but seldom are they really interested in text until they are starting to read.

Because of this, it's so very important to point the text out to your child and trace it with your finger. This is powerful, because not only are they starting to understand that words carry meaning

(and that you're not making up the story which they first believe), but also they are seeing which direction we read and they get to see the difficult return sweep (the fact that we read to the end of a line on its right side, then return sweep to go down to the next line and start on the left side again.) Some children have a hard time grasping the return sweep and early reading can prove difficult to them.

Furthermore, you can teach one-to-one word correspondence to your child. This means that he understands that one spoken word stands for one written word in the book. Once he gets more advanced in his reading (by age 2-3) you can help him
trace the words as you say them, hopping from one word to the next. Another great activity is having your child count how many words are on the page. This helps them to not only be aware of the words, but also to understand their concept of word (or what a word is: letters separated by spaces).

3. Ask your child to find meaning in the pictures.

I'm pretty sure that ever since she had the motor skills to do so, my little girl was pointing at something, anything, and everything around her. As a Reading Specialist, I was especially excited to see her point at the different pictures in the book! Sometimes, especially in picture books, the pictures can have equal, if not more meaning in them than the text itself. Before our little ones can read the words, it's important to help them "read the pictures" and notice that the pictures carry meaning too!

One way to do this is to ask your child to find the characters you just read about. This way they can point to the characters right away and note their importance in the story. You can also talk about the pictures too. "Oh we just read about how Thistle is grey can you point to something else that's grey?" or "Oh they said the clouds are grey and the rock is grey. Where is the rock? Where are the clouds?"

Again, by having our little ones actively engage with the pictures, you are helping them to note the importance of the pictures in the story, and to use the pictures to help them understand the story better! Using pictures to retell a story or understand a story is commonly referred to in PreK and Kinder as a picture walk, so helping them notice the pictures is helping them to get ready to showcase this skill!

4. Engage your child in discussions about the book. (Even if they don't have words yet!)

Another very powerful and simple technique we can use to help enhance our child's reading is to talk with them about what we're reading together, even if they can't talk yet! We can do this in four easy ways:

1) React to the book or characters "Oh my goodness! That Clifford eats so much! I can't imagine how much Emily Elizabeth needs to feed him every day! Look at all that food! You eat a lot sometimes too, but that's even more than I can eat!"

2) Ask your little one questions (and answer for her if she can't talk yet) "Hmmmm,how do you think the firemen felt when Clifford helped put out the fire? I bet they were happy and relieved. They were probably grateful too, because Clifford helped them to do their job!"

3) Talk to them about what could happen next. "Look how dirty Harry is! He got dirty playing at the railroad and in the street! I think he's going to keep getting dirtier, and even darker with dirt! What do you think? Do you think he'll keep getting dirtier? Do you think he'll ever take a bath?"

4) Practice retelling what happened on the page. "Wow! We were right! On this page, Harry kept getting dirtier, because he slid down a coal chute. Look at him, he's sliding right down it!"

Notice that in every example conversation with a child, there were exclamation points! It's so important to be excited about reading with your child and to engage them in an equally exciting conversation. Even if your child isn't talking yet, it's perfectly fine to engage them in this conversation. Our little ones learn so much of their language skills and vocabulary from what we tell them and use around them.

It's therefore important that even though you may feel a bit crazy for talking like this to a little nugget who can't talk back yet, that we become comfortable with it, because it's the best thing we can do for our little one. If you think about it, if you can dance with your baby to the "Hot Dog Dance" from Mickey Mouse Club House and sing along to the song, talking to them about a book doesn't seem like the craziest thing you'll do all day! ;-) 

5. Cuddle Your Little One!

Although the previous 4 tips will help your child's skill levels with reading, and are therefore important on their own, perhaps the biggest impact we can give to our child during read alouds is the feeling they have when reading a book with us. This helps to foster a love of reading for them, and helps to turn them into a lifelong reader.

Think about it. Can you recall reading with your parents? Weren't they comforting memories of a bedtime story, being tucked in, kissed, and going to sleep? When you began reading on your own, without knowing it, you carried these positive feelings about books with you. Because of those experiences, you found books comforting and fun.

We want to create those same feelings of comfort, love, and safety with our children when we read with them. To do this, we want to be close to them when we read. Have them sit on your lap or right next to you. Cuddle up with a blanket, or have them tucked in bed while you're reading with them. Smile often. Hug them lots. Keep it fun. You'll soon find that not only is this quality time good for your child to feel positively about reading, a feeling she'll carry with her for the rest of her life, but also it's time that you'll treasure as well.

So get ready to get friendly and personal with Clifford, Arthur, Curious George, Fancy Nancy, Winnie the Pooh, and the Big Hungry Caterpillar! Because after all, they're going to be your child's favorites, and I'm sure you'll find that the joy they create in your child's eyes will make them your favorites again too!

Until next time....

Yours in Literacy,

The Reading Specialista

Helping Your Child to Pick a Good-Fit Book

Hello Readers,

Now that many of us are back in school or school's right on the horizon, one of the catchiest phrases your kids will be hearing in school is "picking a good-fit" book. Teachers, rightly so, are really working with your children to help them find books that are appropriate for both their interest and difficulty level to read. All the research points to the fact that when students spend time reading good-fit books, they are able to vastly improve in their reading skills and advance to more difficult books in the future. Reading, however, cannot and should not stop at school. In fact, it's advised for our children to read at least 20 minutes every night (in addition to their homework) in order for them to increase in their reading skills and vocabulary knowledge.

To do this, as parents, we have to be able to not only put aside a time and place for our little ones to read each day, but also provide the materials they need. You don't have to be a Barnes and Nobles member, or an Amazon guru and buy all of your child's books! Quite the contrary, you needn't go further than your local library to find an astounding array of great-fit books for your kids.

Understandably, the library can be a dizzying place, and sometimes you may walk out wondering if your child really did pick the type of good-fit book that will help them improve in their reading. Well, that's why I, as the Reading Specialista, am here to give you some tips to make the process of picking a good-fit book for your child both fun and easy.

Motivation First

The first step to helping your child find a good-fit book is to ask them what they like and what they want to read about. Although we may think we  have the best ideas in mind for our children at all times (believe me, I'm super guilty of this one!), when it comes to picking what they want to read and what they're interested in, your kiddo will tell you! Whether they want to read about dinosaurs, fairies, police officers, dogs, cats, or roller coasters, find out what they like and you've got a great place to start. 

It's important for our children to be motivated when they read, so they will read the material more deeply, and will be more likely to finish what they're reading. It's vital to keep in mind that the reading they do, although it is important to be done nightly, it should be done for pleasure, and they should be allowed to read about a topic they want to read. So, once you've found out what your kid wants to read about, you can easily do a topic search in the library database.

5 Finger Rule

Step two, you checked the database, and pulled 10 books of various shapes and sizes for you child. You know some books look too hard and some look too easy, but you can't remember exactly which reading level your child's teacher suggested he had recently achieved. Well, there's a simple fix that teachers teach students in their classrooms that you can also do with your child. It's called the 5 Finger Rule. 

As detailed on the poster, you have your child open the book to a page, and start to read. Each time he misses a word, he puts up a finger. If he puts up 5 fingers or more on one page, that book may be a bit too hard for him to read successfully at this time, and you could gently council him to pick a different book. If, however, he only finds four or less words he has difficulty reading on the page, this could be a good fit book for him, and he can continue reading.

As an important note, sometimes this approach does not always weed out books that are too difficult for our children. In fact, it does tend to allow for our children to read books easier than is appropriate for their level. It's therefore important to have a conversation with your child to ask them if the book is "challenging" enough for them, but not too challenging, or if it's a bit too easy. By doing this, we are helping our children to monitor the difficulty of what they're reading and mature in their book choosing skills. 

Teacher Suggestion and Scholastic Book Wizard

Another great source of information on helping your child to pick a good fit book is your child's teacher and the website Scholastic Book Wizard. In the first couple months of school, your child's teacher will quickly become familiar with your child's growing reading level, and will most likely give an assessment or two to locate the approximate reading level of your child. It's important to note that these tests are not perfect and they only offer an approximate level, not an exact level, but it's a good place to start!

You can ask your child's teacher two questions to help you find good-fit books. 

1) You can ask the teacher "What is my child's reading level in your class right now?" (Many teachers have this information readily on file by the end of the second month of school, or would be able to give you an estimate if you politely ask them to observe your child over a week.) 

2) You could also ask your child's teacher for specific book suggestions. Many teachers have a wealth of knowledge of not only the interest levels of students in the age group that they teach, but also books they know your child would enjoy based on what they read in class.

With the information of your child's reading level, you can access Scholastic Book Wizard, which is one of my all-time FAVORITE TOOLS! I use this in my own work as I'm picking instructional books for small groups, or suggesting books for students.

Once you click on the Scholastic Book Wizard Link, you can search for books by title or level. If you search by title, the site will tell you the level a book is both for interest and reading level (as seen below).

If you search by level, Scholastic will suggest a list of books your child could read that would be on that reading level. You can search by grade level, guided reading level, DRA level, or Lexile level, all which are different types of ways to level books that your child's teacher might use (pictured below). 

It's always important to keep in mind, however, that motivation should always win out over level. I, for one, would never tell a child a book is too hard for him, but I would instead let him try to read it, and if he needed to abandon it, because he found it was too hard, that would be okay. I'd then be there to suggest another book, on his level, and it would be the student's choice if he wanted to read that one or not. So although the Scholastic Book Wizard allows you to be more exact and informed in your child's book choice, it's not the final say in what your child reads.

Those are just a few quick tips to help you make your time in the library with your child both enjoyable and fruitful! When you help your child pick a good fit book to read at home you are not only complementing the instruction that she is receiving at school, but you're also giving her the tools to strengthen her reading and become a lifelong reader!

So enjoy your weekend library trips and your smiling reading child, and...

Until next time...

Yours in Literacy,

The Reading Specialista