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.