The Important Thing About Reading

We have been thinking about what good readers do! So we decided to review in the same pattern as 'The Important Book' introduced last week. We reread this book and worked on the important things of reading.   

We have been talking a lot about Strategy Sam. He provides us with 10 different strategies to use if we get stuck on a word. He is posted in our classroom and in our Reading Bags:

A more detailed version has come home on the yellow sheet in your child's Snuggle Up & Read folder. It doesn't look quite the same but certainly the same strategies are listed and are on your child's reading bookmark in their folder. We will be focusing on introducing/reinforcing one strategy per week, although we want these to be a tool box of strategies and not necessarily strategies to try in a specific order. What works for one student, may not be the best or most efficient strategy for another student. When we use these strategies, this helps us with decoding our words to read accurately what is written. 

However, the second part of reading is remembering and understanding what we read. After reading, we want to be able to retell the book and answer some questions about what we read. These two components (decoding and comprehending) are what bumps up your child's reading level.

Soon, Ms. King will be buzzing with each student for them to read a challenge level book to her. We do this regularly. Ms. King will record your child's updated reading level and record their reading goals to work on as they bump up to continue to be excellent readers. We celebrate all the good reading practice we do!  

The other component of reading that we are working on is acquiring high frequency sight words, letter sounds, phonological awareness and print concepts. We pluck away on these at school but some activities will come home to support our learning in these areas (ie sight word practice or letter sounds or letter identification depending on your child's developmental reading level that will come home later this month in our Snuggle Up & Read folders). 

We look forward to seeing how far our little readers will soar with their reading in Grade 1!! Thanks for all you do at home to support your child's reading!!