Reading session for parents of young readers

1. The Reading Process
Supporting your young reader at home

2. Key Indicators
Role play phase:
● listens to and talks about books
● displays reading like behavior
● knows that print carries a message
● selects texts primarily for enjoyment
● makes links to own experience
● identifies and talks about familiar
characters or people from books

3. Key Indicators
Experimental Phase
● demonstrates comprehension of text
● demonstrates that print remains constant
● maintains a storyline
● picks ‘just right’ books
● has opinions about books that are read

4. Key Indicators
Early phase
● Locates and selects texts appropriate to
purpose, interest and readability
● Expresses and justifies personal
responses
● Uses different strategies to work out
unknown words
● Comprehension can be lost if text is too
difficult

5. Reading in Kindergarten
Starting with the basics
● Concepts of print
● Developing alphabet awareness
● Understand that illustrations and print
convey meaning

6. Reading strategies
● Recognise rhyme and patterned language
● Make predictions
● Retell known stories
● Sequence events of a story
Decoding ‘Sounding out’ - also a strategy but
it has some pitfalls.
Reading is not just about decoding.

7. What else do good readers do?
● Make connections
● Use meaning, visual and memory cues
● Begin to understand how to pick ‘just
right’ books

8. Reading with your 2nd Grade Child
Reading is Thinking!
Switch from learning to read to reading to learn.
Focus on developing fluency and comprehension skills.
Understanding the text beyond what is explicitly
stated.

9. Comprehension Strategies
We explicitly teach specific strategies that develop understanding:
Predicting: What do you think will happen?
Making connections: This reminds me of...
Keeping track of thinking: I wonder why..., This makes me think...
Making inferences: How do you think this character is feeling?
Why?
Activate and connect background knowledge: what do I
already know about this?
Summarising: main events of story

10. What can you do at home?
● Continue with a bedtime story
● Help your child find books he/she loves
● Let your child read below his level
● Make time in his/ her day for reading
● Practice what you preach

11. Talk to your child about what he is reading
Ask questions about the book:
What do you think will happen next?
Why do you think that ...?
What does this book make you think about?

12. Home and around as a learning
environment.
● Making connections in the environment
● Transferable skill -Why picture clues are
important
● Different genres
● Different languages
● Purpose
● Modelling and playing

13. Mem Fox
Reading Magic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvSx
skBF8yA

14. Parents are important in the reading
process
“You have shown him picture books. You have read him books from the time
he was tiny. You have talked about the book cover, the pictures, the characters.
You have shown him how to turn pages. You have chanted the alphabet and
taught him the alphabet song. He understands the meaning of words and
knows the power of a good story. He has heard you think out aloud about what
it all could mean. He goes off to school and at some point he starts reading all
by himself. You have watered your child day after day, week after week, month
after month, year after year. You have given him a solid foundation of language.
It has taken time. But now his root system is deep and strong. He stands tall:
reader, learner, adventurer in life.”

15. Questions

16. Resources for Parents
Books to read:
Reading Magic by Mem Fox
Why reading aloud to our children will change their lives
forever

17. Resources for Parents
Website:
Reading Rockets