Growing Readers Together

Understanding what we read is the primary goal of all reading. This month we will be focusing on making predictions and drawing conclusions. Here are some ideas.

• Before listening to your child read a book, ask what she thinks will happen in the story. It is helpful to do a picture walk. Your child can look through the pictures and make predictions about what might happen in a book. After reading, discuss whether her predictions were correct.
• Let your child read part of a book or you read part of a book to your child. Stop and make predictions about what might happen in the rest of the story. Then read to the end and discuss whether the predictions came true.
• Either during or after reading a book, ask your child to tell you why a particular event happened. Ask what she thinks would have happened if that event would have been different.
• Ask your child to think of an alternate ending for a book she read.
• Ask your child why she thinks the author wrote the book.

Fluency refers to the way reading sounds. Fluent readers pay attention to punctuation. They read in smooth phrases at an appropriate pace using necessary expression. This is a difficult skill for young readers to master.

Choral reading is one way to practice fluency. In choral reading, you and your child will read a couple of sentences, a paragraph, or a page of text together. Afterward, discuss how your reading sounded. Then practice together again at least once or twice more. Then you can let your child read this same part of the text by herself.

Being able to hear and manipulate the sounds in words is an important predictor of success in reading. This month we are working on consonant blends in the beginning and end of words. Here are some ideas of ways to practice this skill.

• Ask your child to write words with consonant blends (ex. stop, fly, grow, try, sky, spin, past, and milk). She can write them on paper or a dry erase board.
• Pick three or four blends. On index cards, write three or four words with each blend in them (one word per card). Let your child sort the words into groups by blend.
• Pick three or four blends. Ask your child to think of words that start or end with those blends. As your child thinks of the words, have her write them on a piece of paper or a dry erase board.