1. Principal’s Coffee Tuesday, November 15th Gwen Blumberg Primary Grade Literacy Specialist Lincoln School, Lincoln MA

2. Agenda: Why read at home? How to help your child find books How to talk to your child about books

3. Why read at home? Reading aloud conditions a child’s brain to associate reading with pleasure, creates background knowledge, builds vocabulary & provides a reading role model. Annually kids spend 900 hours in school and 7,800 hours outside of school. Listening comprehension feeds reading comprehension. Reading and listening skills begin to converge at about eighth grade. (Biemiller, 2003) The vocabulary of children’s books is 3x more complex and rich (30 rare words per 1000) than parent-child converstation (10 rare words per 1000)..

4. Different Types of Reading: Pleasure reading  Beach reading/candy reading Independent reading  “Just Right” Reading/ “Good Fit” Books Advanced Reading  “Save for later” or a possible read aloud

5. How to find Good Fit Books Ask your child’s teacher to tell you your child’s independent reading level. Use tools such as: Scholastic Book Wizard Select Web Sites The Amazon focused marketing tool

6. Scholastic Book Wizard Book Wizard Amazon Target Marketing www.amazon.com Select Web Sites Read Kiddo Read The Book Hive Guys Read Beaverton Leveled Book Lists More Leveled Book Lists

7. How to fit more advanced books into your child’s reading diet: Read Alouds: not just for nonreaders Books on CD: in the car, in the home

8. How to talk about books with your child to increase comprehension Three dimensions of thinking when processing written texts: Thinking WITHIN the Text Thinking BEYOND the Text Thinking ABOUT the Text

9. Thinking WITHIN the Text Summarizing/ Retelling  Tell me about what you read. What was the problem in the story? How did it end?

10. Thinking BEYOND the Text  Predicting What do you think will happen next?  Making Connections Personal, World, Text What does this remind you of? How does this help you understand?  Inferring  How do you know that? What information in the text plus what you already know helped you come to that conclusion?  Synthesizing  How has your understanding changed as a result of listening to this story?

11. Thinking ABOUT the Text Analyzing  Examing elements of a text to know more about how it is constructed and noticing aspects of the author’s craft.  What is the author’s purpose for writing this text? What makes you think this? Critiquing  Evaluating a text based on the reader’s personal, world or text knowledge and critically thinking about the ideas in it.  What do you think about this book? Can you give me some specific points or details from the book that lead you to that thinking?

12. Just talk… some ideas… Hold a conversation and discuss what your child has read. Ask your child probing questions about the book and connect the events to his or her own life. For example, say "I wonder why that girl did that?" or "How do you think he felt? Why?" and "So, what lesson can we learn here?". Help your child make connections between what he or she reads and similar experiences he has felt, saw in a movie, or read in another book. Help your child monitor his or her understanding. Teach him/her to continually ask herself whether she understands what she's reading. Help your child go back to the text to support his or her answers. Discuss the meanings of unknown words, both those s/he reads and those s/he hears. Read material in short sections, making sure your child understands each step of the way. Discuss what your child has learned from reading informational text such as a science or social studies book.

13. www.lincnet.org/blumberg Thank you for coming!