Reading Activities at Home

After my recent post on literacy building through comic strip-making, I've had some parents ask for other at-home early literacy building ideas.  I also had an interview with the principal for my new reading intervention position, during which she asked what I might say in letters home to parents.

I've been thinking up some ideas:

Reading and Drawing
Provide a drawing utensils and a clipboard while reading with your child and encourage him or her to draw a picture of an event in the story as you read.

High-Frequency Words
Several words appear in print over and over.  Recognizing common words, or site words can make reading easier.  Of course content is more valuable to discuss, since reading is a meaning-making process, but it can be a fun and simple game to go back through the text and identify selected words and/or count the number of times a particular word appears.

Story Retelling and what if...
After reading together, ask your child to retell the story to you.  It may help to begin by modeling what it's looks and sounds like to retell a story first.  Try adding new details to your retellings (what if...) 
and talk about what happened in the beginning, middle and end of the story.

Character and Setting 
Discussing the fact that books and stories have characters and settings is the beginning of Literary Analysis. Explain that a setting is where the story happens.  After reading, talk with your child about the main characters and where the story takes place.  Try creating a storyboard, or pictures that show that main character(s) and the setting(s).

Dialogic Reading
Reading is most enjoyable when you and your child carry on conversations about the story.  This is called dialogic reading- having a dialog about a story.  Ask questions about the story as you read together.  When the story is finished, ask more questions such as:

• Who was the main character?
• What problem(s) or obstacles did the character(s) encounter?
• How was the problem solved?
• What was your favorite part of the story?

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I recently came across an article in the Huffington Post by Lisa Bloom titled: How to Talk to Little Girls. From the perspective of a literacy advocate, I'm not convinced the article is appropriately titled.  The purpose of the article is social commentary on raising girls in a society filled with gender expectations, but underneath Ms. Bloom offers some invaluable literacy building strategies to use when talking to the younger folks of society (boys included).  Instead of approaching children by initiating conversation about what they are wearing or other other such physical amenities or features they posses, try simply asking if they've read any good books, written any good stories, or created anything they are proud of lately, and see what you get!