Reading

 

Listening to your child read and reading to your child is important for their development. My experience has shown that children that read with a caring adult outside of school hours, show very evident gains both at home and at school. My intention is to facilitate a positive home learning experience that can fit into your family's daily routine. If it becomes stressful or a chore, please contact me and I can try to offer some suggestions.

Students are encouraged to read each evening. For every evening completed, please initial an empty space on the tally bookmark. Once the bookmark is filled in, return it to class. Their name will then be put in a draw for prizes. My preference is that you spend at least some of the time each week on the levelled classroom books from our class. This will help me to track their reading development over the course of the year.

Your child will come home with 2 or 3 books that they have picked at their level and their tally sheet in a ziplock bag. If the books seem too easy or too difficult, please add a note in the home reading zip lock or their agenda. They can practise these books at home for 1- 2 weeks. When they bring their bag back to school, I will meet with them during our reading period. We will discuss if the books were a good fit difficulty-wise and we will discuss what levels they should choose from to take home. It is important that the students understand what they read. Re-reading is an important part of building up their fluency. In fact, I encourage them to read the same book 2 or 3 times (unless it is a longer chapter book). Discussing the book will help comprehension; if the person the child is reading to doesn't understand, they can explain what happened to them in English.In addition to this, I encourage you to include other reading experiences where you read to them in English or French or they read a library book in English or French. Every reading experience is beneficial, regardless of language as it helps to build comprehension and a culture of reading at home. The trick is to keep it positive and not overdo it if it becomes a battle. I have also included some audio of phonetic sound segments we refer to in class. Click here to access the audio.