Stories are magic, they whisk us away to far-off lands, help us see life through the lens of another and are full of beautiful words.
This week the Reading Adventure is all about interacting with stories together.
Prompts to help interaction whilst reading
2 story cubes to extend the discussion and playful activities after reading
Story maps and cards to help retell and sequence your stories
Interacting with books and having conversations about the themes, plot, or the facts as the case may be with a nonfiction book is a very effective way to improve oral language and comprehension skills, and show your child what reading fluently looks and sounds like.
Sometimes with the best will in the world, a conversation with your child can go something like this –
Parent: What do you like about the book?
Child: Everything?
Parent: Sounds like you liked the book- which part did you like best?
Child: All of it.
Parent: Which character did you like best?
Child: All of them.
All you want is to know what they love now, what is making them curious and what books you could suggest next and you get this mixed bag response of nothingness.
Instead of waiting until the end of the book interact and engage throughout the book
Create a culture of shared reading in your home. It can be all too easy to dash off a story and not interact at all. Reading to children is good, but reading with them is better. By modelling how good readers think you are teaching your little or big learners to become better readers. A story with babies might take less than 5 minutes, and a story with a preschooler might stretch to 10. As children get older and books become longer–reading a chapter, a night might become unwieldy. Instead, read 5 pages and truly interact. Book talk each day will help to develop positive reading habits and plays a critical role in language development.
Reading daily won’t explicitly teach your child to read, but it will lay a firm foundation for explicit literacy instruction in later years to stand tall on. No one learned to ride a bike or play the piano by just watching. Children learn most from books when they are actively engaged in the process.
Here are some book talk ideas
Babies
Read with your baby. Yes, I know they are an adorable ball that sleeps a lot and don’t appear to do much besides eat, cry, gurgle, and fill a nappy.
But babies are like little sponges, they absorb everything.
Sharing stories, singing and narrating the day helps to build early literacy skills. It is a great time for a snuggle and to bond. In the beginning, books with high contrast colours are the best and are easy for babies to focus on. Books with different textures are a great sensory activity, and babies love to look at faces.
Toddlers and Preschoolers
At this age, kids love to sit on your lap and be read to. Point out and name parts of the picture. Ask your child to name parts of the picture while you point. Prompting like this on each page encourages vocabulary building. This is a marvellous time to discuss the features of books. Discuss how to read a book and point out that the printed words flow from left to right. Use your finger under the words as a guide to show your child this is the way the words form sentences and the sentences make up the complete story.
Take, for example, The Gruffalo -The parent says,
Who did The Gruffalo just see?
When the child answers fox, respond with a sentence to help your child build sentence structure–That’s right, The Gruffalo did just see the fox.
Repeating the words back to your child builds on their response and improves oral language skills.
Help your child make predictions as to what will happen next and make real-life connections.
Thinking of The Gruffalo again, instead of just talking about the mouse taking a walk through the wood – which is great – discuss the food he is talking about on the walk.
What is your favourite food?… I’m not so sure about roasted fox?! Link the story to experiences you have had in your own life or contrast to your life if there is no connection.
Stop and predict what the fox might say…
Discuss the fox’s expression. What do you think he is feeling? Reading picture books together is less about the explicit instruction of learning to read and more about involvement in the story.
This is a splendid time to add role play and art and craft activities to extend story time. Let’s paint or draw a picture of your favourite character. Reading and writing are complementary skills. Encourage mark making from an early age as this helps to develop the motor skills needed for writing in the classroom later on.
Tips to expand story time to encourage literacy skills to flourish
Primary school and beyond
Children should hopefully hear lots of stories at school. Explicit literacy instruction should happen in all schools to help children develop the decoding skills needed to learn to read fluently. It is at this time many parents stop reading a bedtime story or any stories as life gets busy. A shared reading culture in your home should continue and is particularly effective for all, especially children who have language problems, are slow to read or are not engaging in the learn to read process.
Always have a book on the go. At the moment we are reading Harry Potter 4 with everyone and the youngest gets a double dose as she is all about fairies and loves the old classic The Flower Fairies, the boys who are 11 and 14 – not so!
As children get older challenge them to pick out elements of grammar such as describing words (adjectives) for the main character and action words (verbs) that describe what the characters are doing, why they are doing it and how.
This time is a brilliant opportunity to discuss new and difficult words. Stop and talk about words to make connections and develop understanding. A large vocabulary is linked to a strong performance at school across the curriculum. Natalie Wexler in The Knowledge Gap discusses this very topic. The more your child knows, the easier it is to grow vocabulary and language awareness. Again, it is all about the firm foundation.
Make the questions personal
There are a heap of book report style questions on Pinterest and they can be useful to elicit information- but your child has probably heard them all before at school and chances are they all start with wh- why, what, when, where questions – if overused they can feel like an interrogation rather than a chat. So use these questions sparingly.
Why did the Gruffalo take a walk through the deep, dark wood?
Who is your favourite character?
These are both great questions to discuss elements of the story – but if you want a deep chat with your child with real dialogue, questions must be on a deeper level and personal so, you can see each other’s point of view. Ask about the wood and connect it to a family experience you have had in a similar place.
Help your child make connections to the world they live in and compare to other places. I have two children that have never seen actual snow and don’t know what it’s like to have ice freeze up your car windows and need deicing before the day starts. When we read books about the winter in Perth, it is an unfamiliar experience to read books about the winter in Canada and other chilly places. We chat about life in the snow whilst reading. We discuss how your toes stick together and how warm it is indoors compared to outdoors. Going to school in the snow is a cold, slow business. We discuss our weather in comparison. Chat about your connection or not to the setting in the story. Talk about how your life is the same or different. These conversations forge real-world relationships and help your child to experience and understand a situation without having lived it.
If you engage, they will engage
Bring enthusiasm about books, stories and fun facts to the table. Talk about the novel, magazine or non-fiction book you are reading. Ask your children to pick a book to read and take the time to read together frequently.
We would love you to join in with our Reading Adventures