Helping Children Read: Marion Sterling Parents Get Key Tips From The Literacy Cooperative

One of The Literacy Cooperative's volunteers in action, reading a story to area school children.  Photo courtesy Hatha Communications.

The Literacy Cooperative recently hosted a Parent Learning Session, offering tips and other advice to assist parents in encouraging their children to read.

The Parent Learning Session was a supplement to the STEP (Supporting Tutors, Engaging Pupils) tutoring program the Literacy Cooperative is piloting at Marion Sterling school. First graders at Marion Sterling are paired with a tutor for one-on-one sessions that follow a research-based curriculum designed to improve the child’s literacy skills.

The Parent Learning Session focused on providing parents with tips on reading with their children. During the session, parents were encouraged to read with their children for at least 20 minutes every day. Parents were led through a series of strategies to be used before, during and after reading a book to their child.

Some important tips included:

  • Before reading a book together, talk about what is on the cover and what the book may be about. Point out and explain the role of the author and illustrator. Talk about the setting and the characters.
  • While reading together, periodically stop and ask what will happen next, and recall details.
  • After reading a book together, ask what the child thought of the story. Summarize the story, and ask imaginative questions. Parents learned that an effective reader is able to engage the child, maintain the child’s attention, and make the story relevant. 

In addition to reading books together, parents can help to improve their child’s reading skills by engaging in literacy-based activities. These include helping your child say the beginning, middle and ending sound in words. Also, helping them recognize and write their first and last name, pointing out the letters in the alphabet on signs and in books. Parents can also help their children make connections to things that happen in a story to a child's life. Finally, these activities help children to become excited about learning new words to develop a strong vocabulary.

The "Read with Your Child" booklet used for this workshop can be found at: http://www.literacycooperative.com/documents/ReadwithyourChild.pdf

 

Katherine Bulava

Katherine Bulava is President of Hatha Communications.

Read More on K through 12
Volume 2, Issue 5, Posted 5:05 PM, 05.01.2012