Dear Parents:
Are you looking for some ways to help your child improve their reading? Here are a few ways you can achieve this:
1) Reading Aloud (working on decoding, fluency, and expression)
- Sounding out words they don't know by stretching out the sounds the letters make.
- Reading with fluency, which means reading words in phrases (a few words at a time), in a smooth voice and NOT like a robot.
- Have them change their voices to the character's voices and to what is happening so they read with expression and emotion.
2) Reading Silently – Fiction book questions to ask that help with comprehension
- Tell me about your book – What happened in the story? (Gets them to retell and summarize what they read – They can use transition words like, FIRST, NEXT, THEN, LAST, etc…). Have them say the characters names and the setting when they are retelling!!
- Are there any parts of the book that made a movie in your mind that you could envision? Which part? What senses did you use to envision this part? What images did you see?
- What can you tell me about the main character in your book? What character traits describe him or her? How do you know they are like that, can you prove that character trait using evidence?
- Has a character changed from the beginning to the end of the book? How did they change? What do you think caused them to change?
- What inferences (ideas) have you made about a character or something that happened in the book? What made you come up with that idea? Support your idea with evidence from the book.
- Stop at a point in the child's book and ask, "What do you think is going to happen next?" (This gets them to make predictions).
- What problem is the character or characters having in your book? Did you find out the solution to this problem yet? If so, what is the solution? If you don't know the solution yet, what do you think it will be?