3 Ways to Read
9/27/2019
One of the main goals of kindergarten literacy, other than the foundational pieces for encoding and decoding, is to help our littlest learners fall in love with literacy, with reading other people's stories and telling their own as well as reading to learn and writing to share knowledge and teach others. The first thing we work on is reading the story rather than simply looking at the pictures. Students need to fundamentally understand that the pictures and words in a book tell a story or teach something. They are not just pictures or words, but pieces of a story or teaching. In my experience, it is integral for students to understand this in order to fall in love with literacy and become avid readers. Knowing that books always tell a story or teach us something also lays the foundation for comprehension. There are three ways to read a book. You can read the words, read the pictures, or retell the story. When students are reading books that they already know by heart, we practice: "look, think, remember, read." When students are reading new books, we practice: "look, think, read." As you can see, the common element is the look and think step. This is so important because it is training students to look at the illustrations and think about what is happening in that moment of the story and how it fits into the rest of the story. In nonfiction books, students look at the pictures and try to notice every detail and learn everything they can. Most students made the switch to actually reading their books, rather than just looking at the pictures, weeks ago. I can always tell when this happens because students start to become more engaged, engrossed in their books, and I will often hear giggles or see reactions as they enjoy their stories. The few who are still working to do so are not-so coincidentally the ones who break stamina first. Even though we will begin reading the words next week, we will continue to work on reading the pictures and retelling the story, as these types of reading help build avid readers.
Comments are closed.
|
Saania AliMs. Ali graduated from the University of Houston with a Bachelors of Science in Interdisciplinary Studies. She specializes in Early Childhood Education, ESL, and Special Education. Her hobbies include traveling, reading, and painting! Archives
April 2021
Categories |