Reading

Community Resources:

• Corvallis Public Library: Spanish and English books, audiobooks, and Ebooks http://cbcpubliclibrary.net/kids/ 
• Bilingual Spanish/English Story Time is every second Saturday of the month at the Corvallis Public Library.  http://cbcpubliclibrary.net/los-cuentos-bilingual-spanishenglish-storytime/
• Interactive Ebooks in English and in Spanish for children.  Each child has their own login and password that the school has given them.  Please contact Miss Geissler if you need another copy of it. http://www.raz-kids.com/main/Login

Reading Strategies: 

Good readers understand what they read, make connections, ask questions, make predictions and summarize what they read.

• Comprehension: Ask your child to tell you what they have read in the story so far.  Encourage your child visualize the story in their head as they read.  Good readers have a constant "movie" running through their head as they read.  You can ask your child to imagine or draw what a character or scene looks like. Have them verbally explain what the setting looks like. Some kids prefer to draw over verbally tell, just ask your child which one they prefer.  It is good to have your child practice both verbally telling you and visually showing you what they have read so far.
• Connections: Have your child relate to the text they are reading.  Maybe they have had similar experiences or know of someone who has had similar experience as the characters in the text.  Maybe they have read another text that is similar to the one they are currently reading.  This will help your child create personal connections with the text they are reading and be more interested in the text.  This is what good readers do.
• Questioning: Have your child come up with questions about the text they are reading.  Guide them to ask questions about the meaning and theme (The Me Message) of the text.  These will be more meaningful questions and help them actively participate in the reading process. 
• Predicting: Have your child predict what they think will happen next in the story. Ask them why they think that. This helps encourage active reading and helps them stay interested in the text. This can also help them to clarify misunderstandings.
• Summarizing: Have your child tell you what they read.  This helps them build retention- hold onto what they read.  Somebody Wanted But So is a summarizing technique that can sometimes be used when summarizing a whole story. 
  _____________(Character(s)) wanted____________________but______________________so_______________________.
• Oral Reading:  It is very important for children to read out loud as well as be read to as they follow along in a text.  When children come across a word they do not know there are several different strategies they can use.  1. Use the pictures as clues.  2.Skip the word and come back to it, using context clues to help them define the unknown word.  3. Sound it out and listen and look to see if it sounds or looks like a real word they have heard or seen before.  4. Look for familiar letter chunks in the word, read them separately and then blend them together to sound out the word.  5.  Reread the sentence several times and think about what would make sense, try a few words that might work.
• Language Development Support: All of the above will help students develop language.  It is very important for children to hear text being read to them as the follow along in the text.  This will help them match the visual language with the verbal language.  The Corvallis Public Library is a great, free, resource for books, audiobooks (in Spanish and in English) as well as Ebooks.   If a child reads something wrong ask the child to re read the sentence.  Modeling good language is very important for children.  Modeling has much more impact on language development than explicitly correcting wrong language.  For example if a child says "Where is the paper white?"  your modeling response might look like:  "The white paper is over on the counter." rather than explicitly pointing out that they said "white paper" backwards.

Creative ways to build literacy skills

• Create a play to summarize the story you read.
• Create a news broadcast about an event that happened in your reading.
• Create a book trailer or commercial - could be on paper, on a camera/video, live (like a play) please don't give away the ending!
• Create a song about the theme of the story or a character in the story.
• Create a song about an event that happened in the story.
• Create a piece of art to represent a theme in the story you read.  Here are just a few art ideas: drawing, painting, collage, chalk, 3D display.
• Create a sequel to the story you just read.
• Create a comic strip of the story you read.