Enlarge Your World
From the desk of Leigh Ann . . .
“There are many ways to enlarge your child’s world. Love of books is the best of all” – Jacqueline Kennedy
One of the most important things we can do to help instill a love of learning in our students is to read to them every day. When children are immersed in a great story with rich language their vocabulary is enhanced, speaking and listening skills expand, and the desire to be a reader is nourished. Reading exposes our young learners to correct speech patterns and creates awareness of how print works. A teacher’s enthusiastic modeling of fluency and expression can hook a student and create a spark that shows the fulfillment that reading a great book can truly bring.
Here are a few tips for reading to children:
- Be familiar with the book you have chosen to share with the class. This will help you facilitate a meaningful discussion with your students as the story unfolds.
- Check out the cover together. Explore the title, illustrations, and make some predictions.
- Breathe life into the story by reading with expression. Your good modeling can be a catalyst for your students’ growing fluency.
- Encourage the children to examine the illustrations and make predictions about what will happen next as the story progresses.
- Model how good readers make inferences. Encourage the children to draw on their own background knowledge and information from the text to draw conclusions.
- Pose questions along the way and model what good readers do to gain greater comprehension of a text.
Reading to children can be an incredibly fulfilling phenomenon. In the midst of the hustle and bustle of schedules, curriculum, and general daily chaos – taking the time to settle down together and share a good book can be very cathartic. Reading aloud not only brings calm into the flurry of daily classroom activity, it fulfills a number of the standards we are tasked to deliver. More than that – it inspires our students to be readers.