Best Reading Practices for Parents

Wonder Playlist

7/6/2016

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What to do with this playlist

I can think of a few ways to use this playlist (including looking at the lyrics of the songs, watching the music videos, discussing the artists themselves and how they have been ostracized, AND great) but one of the easier ways is to give the book + make a playlist on a thumb drive and put it together as a gift.

Wonder, the real hardcover book

Wonder via Kindle

Wonder via iBooks

Wonder audiobook via Audible

Wonder audiobook via iTunes

This book is all over upper elementary and upper middle school summer lists.

And, with good reason.

It's a great book of coming of age, making good decisions, changing your own behavior, making mistakes, apologizing for them and being a friend. For adults, it's a reminder on how to treat others who are different than we are and to always be aware of our own reactions.

This book also includes great hints at songs - in essence, it creates a playlist for you to listen to while reading. Awesome!

Wonder playlist, via iTunes:

Enjoy!

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And...Lily's Ideal Bookshelf

6/26/2016

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And, what would the Ideal bookshelf posts be without Liliana's ideal bookshelf list. Here is her list at the moment. Remember, she's three so she revisits this list often. Every few weeks we talk about this bookshelf and if anything needs to be added to it or removed from it.

Without further adieu...

1. Puff, the Magic Dragon

Hands down her favorite. Liliana loves the song, she loves the pictures, she loves Peter Yarrow.

She recognizes when it becomes the sad part of the book and then reminds herself that she's had friends move away and it all ends up okay.

I think she personally identifies with Puff and uses the book as an emotional tool.

Books can do that for you - give you language and help you feel better about being lonesome sometimes.

2. Chester's Way

Let's be honest, Lily likes this book because there is a wackadoodle character named Lilly in the book.

She loves this book which makes my heart smile because I LOVE Kevin Henkes.

This book is about a duo who does everything together and are not very nice to new girl, Lilly. But when Lilly saves the day, they all become fast friends.

Kevin Henkes does a great job showing how to positively change a situation and even has a bullying episode in the book without giving away language that the bully would use (we don't need to model that in our reading with kids).

3. The Kissing Hand

This is such a sweet tale and I have a hunch Liliana likes this book because it makes me melt.

Little Chester raccoon (no relationship to the above book) is going to school and is nervous. I used to read this book to little kids on the first day of school so they were reminded that their parents loved them, even though they were in class with me.

Chester raccoon even has a sweet surprise for his mother.

4. Swatch

I've written about this book before. So what else is there to say?

Strong female character, beautiful use of color, great vocabulary in the book.

Lily seems to know the book by heart. We read it every week consistently.

5. Knuffle Bunny

Liliana likes this book because it's something she can relate to. We live in Brooklyn which is where this book is set. We do our laundry in a laundry room and she helps out. She's even had to wash her favorite stuffed animals before (although never lost them like Trixie does).

I love the illustrations meshing with real life photography work and the story is sweet.

6. Corduroy

This one came out of left-field. I did not hype this book at all. But here it is (and for the record, I do like Don Freeman books, especially Dandelion).

Secretly, I think she wishes she could go to the store and buy her very own stuffed animal too!

7. The Illustrated Compendium of Amazing Animal Facts

This book has it all - animals, peeing, pooping and real learning.

Liliana's favorite fact?

Flamingoes pee on themselves to cool themselves off.

Who knew?!

Even better, the author is releasing a pack of postcards in the Fall. Goes great with the tip on writing postcards!

Enjoy!

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Quick Literacy Tip: Book Bins for Babysitters

5/18/2016

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Of course, this post applies to any caregiver - grandparents, babysitters, aunts, uncles - basically any adult who can read, who will be looking after your child and in your house.

Liliana, after having picked out books for her sitter to read. She stuck them in the shelf and was really excited about reading after I left.

Last week, we had a last-minute babysitter coming to our house.

Usually, I have something specific queued up for a babysitter and Liliana to do together (whether they do it or not is another story). It just gives Liliana a specific focus when I am walking out the door. She can focus on doing "whatever I left out" instead of my leaving.

Since this was a last minute gig, we did something I used to do in the classroom. We made a stack of books for the babysitter to read.

I used to have kids make stacks or lists of picture books they wanted either me to read with them as a class, or have someone read to them on the weekend. This set the expectation that reading would happen and it gives kids the power to choose their books (super important!).

Picking a Book to Read Together at Home

5/9/2016

I once picked a book to read to my daughter that she hated. She walked away mid-read.

I've also picked a book to read aloud in the classroom that the kids hated (for the record, it was Bud, not Buddy and actually my Assistant Principal picked it, so I give myself some slack). It was a bad choice because it was way above the kids' reading levels.

And, I've even picked books for myself to read that I hated. One of which is listed as a classic and you might judge me, but it was Uncle Tom's Cabin. I just couldn't finish it - and I've tried at least 10 times.

And here's what happens when you are reading a book that isn't well received. No one has fun.

I know you're thinking, this seems obvious, but here's what's not. How to pick the right book to read at home with your child.

There are a few thing to consider when picking a book - but here is one that your child's teacher would like you to consider - pick books to read at home that further your child's ability to actually read.

Here's how to do that.

Quick Literacy Tip: Sing Out Loud

4/13/2016

Photo Credit: Lori Cannava

I was reminded of this tip tonight. After I our little girl climbed into bed and was situated with her millions of stuffed animals and tucked in just right, and I left her to slumber, I heard her over the monitor, "I need a lullaby."

So, I went back to her room and sang her a song.

Singing and reading are a lot alike. Even for big kids.

It's calming. It's lyrical. It has cadence. It has meaning. It helps make meaning. It's expressive.

Singing is after all, is reading with a tune.

Boy Readers and Banned Books

4/4/2016

This is the beginning of a boy reader section. Stay with me each week, and I will post a different topic about motivating boys to read. We'll use the tag Boy Readers so you can find all the articles easily.

Ask any teacher and you will find that they have at least one boy in their class who will only read sports books. Or dinosaur books. Or planet books. Or there is nothing at all in the classroom library that will suffice.

Rarely, will you find a boy in an upper elementary classroom looking for the traditional fiction books that we stock in our classroom libraries. Not all boys, but at least one.

As one recent reading study suggested...

“The books that appeal to boys are rarely Caldecott or Newbery Award selections and can actually frequently be found on banned book lists.”

In case you're wondering what that list is, you can find it here. It includes Harry Potter, The Chocolate War, Scary Stories, My Brother Sam is Dead, Fat Kid Rules the World and some great adult classics.

So then, the first thing we need to solve is having books boys like - not just the standard fare. And we can indulge their interests a little bit here. If the little boy reader in your life only wants to read dinosaur books or books about sports, do it. Or, stay with me here...farting books.

For awhile.

The goal is to get them through the gateway of reading. Once they're through, we motivate them to read more complex material (more on that in a different post, but you have to get them consistently reading first!). Boys tend to like edgier material, things that will throw the adults in their lives for a loop. Those are usually books that we don't always keep around in our school libraries.

The idea here is to engage your boy readers. We must use the topics they like and stock their libraries full of books they would most likely pick up and find interesting. If they can't find the books that are interesting to them, they start to believe that they don't exist. And that reading is not for them.

So, what interests them? You know your reader best, but the research bears this out. Boys tend to like:

Books in series. Once they find one they like, they want to know there are more of them.
Graphic Novels
Comics
Succinct texts - magazines and newspapers, which are not always kept in classrooms
Books with male main characters in action settings -Harry Potter and Gary Paulsen books

So, what are some of the banned books that are appropriate for boys in elementary and middle school?

The Stupids Series (for younger readers) - Level K
Goosebumps Stories, Guided Reading Levels range from O to U
Scary Stories, Level P
Captain Underpants, Level P
The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby, Level Q
The Boy Who Lost His Face, Level R
Saga - series of graphic novels, no Level
Bone - Ranges from Levels S to W
Harry Potter, Level V (and bonus, there is a new Illustrated Harry Potter series)
Harris and Me, Level V
Athletic Shorts, Level Y
Friday Night Lights, Level Y
His Dark Materials, Level Z
Fallen Angels (for middle schoolers content wise), Level Z
A Day No Pigs Would Die, Level Z
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Level Z
Fat Kid Rules the World
Grendel
The Chocolate War

And bonus, a number of these are series and can be followed immediately up with the next book. Keep in mind, you can also read these with your boys. They can be your read-aloud book.

Let's get our boys reading enthusiastically. Enjoy!

That's Punny! and Here's Why That's Great

4/1/2016

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I recently sent my friend a joke and her response was...

And, it totally was. But, guess what? Dad jokes are all the rage. They are good for your kid's reading.

Reading is a complex cognitive process. There are a lot of pieces that are moving in concert to make sure reading can happen. But, our overall goal remains the same - we want to understand the world around us and when we can't experience it firsthand, we want to be able to read about it.

Understanding the world through reading requires that we are able to read fluently.

Let me break that down. When adults describe someone as fluent in a subject, we mean they can function flawlessly and without hiccups. In reading, it means that also, and specifically, reading with speed, accuracy...automaticity. Good readers do it automatically.

Fluency also includes your tempo, emphasis, inflection, tone and delivery. Essentially, you want your internal reading voice to sound like your out-loud speaking voice. Reading language should mirror oral language. This is called prosody.

Prosody is a tough nut to crack because it can't be measured like reading speed and accuracy, so it often is ignored on standard reading measures administered in the classroom. Or it's left subjectively up to the person administering the reading benchmark.

The scale by which we judge fluent readers in prosody looks like this:

"Reads primarily in larger, meaningful phrase groups. Although some regressions, repetitions, and deviations from text may be present, these do not appear to detract from the overall structure of the story. Preservation of the author’s syntax is consistent. Some or most of the story is read with expressive interpretation."
National Assessment of Educational Progress Fluency Scale

All that to say, fluency includes reading expressively.

With only speed and accuracy, we'd sound like robots. Furthermore, readers who are only focused on speed and accuracy oftentimes miscomprehend the story because they are so worried about reading it "right". They confuse word groups and miss meaning. Or, they can be choppy readers and that also makes it hard to follow appropriate word groups for meaning.

Prosody is what makes our speech relatable in oral language. It's what makes a story memorable. It's exactly what makes a joke funny.

Jokes are all about delivery. A good joke-teller (and read story-teller too) leaves appropriate wait time at punctuation. They emphasize the right words to maximize the punchline. Great comedians phrase their words just right for laughter.

Practicing jokes can make your reader more fluent overall in their reading and you have the added benefit that telling jokes is fun.

And this is the motivator for many kids.

Jokes have other reading benefits, beyond fluency. Aside from practicing prosody, kids also learn new words. They pick up on homophones and puns. You can talk about double meanings of words or why a joke is punny and kids will start to learn sophisticated language.

There are a few practical ways to weave jokes into your everyday routine:

Leave cartoons or quick jokes on the table for breakfast in the morning for your kids to find
Get a joke book to use on on your kids
Get a joke book for your kids to use on you!
Read comic strips from, like Dennis the Menace
Read Amelia Bedelia books

Telling jokes to your kids is a great way to model delivery, inflection, appropriate wait time - all the elements of prosody. The more jokes they hear you tell, the better they will want to be at telling them too.

Tell jokes! It's for your kid's reading benefit and it's fun.

Enjoy!

P.S. Here's a tidbit. You can also find lots of jokes in kid movies. Lily's favorite? It's in Finding Nemo when the octopus gets scared and yells, "Awe, you guys made me ink!"

Award Winning Beverly Cleary

3/30/2016

I remember devouring the entire Mouse series in a weekend. That's how good they were. The only other books to come close were Nancy Drew and Harry Potter. That might say something about my reading taste, but as a kid, Beverly Cleary was it.

In about 2 weeks, she will turn 100. So, let's celebrate her birthday by consuming her books and the movies that go with them.

If you wanted to get a jumpstart on her birthday, you could get one of her books and read it by April 12. You could do what I did as a kid and start with Ralph S. Mouse.

She's won the Newbery Award outright and has honorable mentions in the category for a couple of her Ramona books.

But, one of the movie adaptations also won an award - the Carnegie Medal of Excellence. And you guessed it, it was a mouse movie. Ralph S. Mouse.

Having a movie night - what a great way to celebrate a birthday.

This is the cover of the original award-winning movie adaptation by Churchill Films.

It can be hard to come by, but it's a great movie. It's 120 minutes in length.

You can buy it as a DVD on Amazon.

This is the newer, easier to come by adaptation of the Mouse collection. The best part here is, you get all of the mouse stories in one package.

Run time is 195 minutes for all 3 Mouse stories, plus 4 bonus stories.

Here's the book! A fun story about a little mouse who can no longer stay at the Inn.

Guided Reading Level: 0
176 Pages

Enjoy!

Quick Literacy Tip: Postcards

3/30/2016

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Remember sending postcards as a kid? I used to love sending postcards when we went on vacations or even better, receiving them in the mail. Who doesn't love getting mail?!

Liliana and I were in Dallas this past weekend and we visited the zoo. As souvenirs, I put pictures up from the trip in her picture frames instead of getting tchotchkes. And as something fun to do, we always get postcards to send. Liliana has a lot to say (always) so she thought it was great when I told her postcards are a way of "telling stories" to other people who live far away.

Plus, writing postcards is a quick way to get literacy into your day and works for little kids all the way up to big kids!

Complex Storybooks for Little Readers

3/28/2016

Once we get past the board-book and very simple storybook phase with kids, we really want to dig in with thoughtful stories. Trouble is, not all storybooks are useful for teaching critical thinking skills. Many of our old favorites like The Very Hungry Caterpillar are too simple to teach critical thinking. There isn't much of a plot, there isn't much to discuss and there aren't many characters.

As children get older and school-aged, we want to captivate their attention and dazzle them with what the world could be. Through books. We want reading to be magical.

If we want our children to turn into imaginative, critical-thinking grown-ups, we must expose them to complex storybooks - books that require the reader to infer character thoughts and motivation. And then, the reader needs to connect those thoughts to why a character acts.

The books listed below are some of the best complex storybooks for little readers. The reading levels exceed our youngest readers, but when read aloud or read together, these books are appropriate for young children. In no small part, because the illustrations in all of these books are compelling and aid in comprehension. They are all Caldecott Award winning books.

Without further ado, here are some of the best complex storybooks for little readers:

1. Owl Moon

This is a perennial favorite for a reason. It is beautifully illustrated but also has an elegant story to go with it.

It's a heartwarming tale of going owling. The child's father takes his child owling at night, where he must be quiet and brave.

But it's worth it in the end, when they see an owl fly overhead, land on a tree branch and look directly at them.

It's a nice way to talk about things that are calming, nature and things we love. Also, there is running thought commentary on the part of the child in the book.

Guided Reading Level O

2. Finding Winnie

This is the true story of how Winnie-the-Pooh came to be. It's heartwarming and includes complex text.

There are photos at the end of the book of the real life Winnie and her first owner (the author's great-grandfather). It's a fun way to introduce Winnie-the-Pooh or expand on an old favorite.

Guided Reading Level: M

Bonus! A good companion text to this is...

Now We Are Six

While this hasn't been put on a Guided Reading level scale, the writing puts the text at partway through 3rd grade level difficulty.

3. Locomotive

This book also won the Robert F. Sibert award for informational texts for children.

This would make a great read-aloud with your child who is younger. It's also a long enough book, that this could take you more than one reading to finish, maybe even 3 readings all put together.

It's a higher reading level, but appropriate for younger readers, type of book. It is a beautiful non-fiction book for young kids, which can be hard to come by. It will be especially good for train lovers.

Guided Reading Level: O

You may also want to check out his other titles Moonshot about Apollo 11 (Level N) and Lightship (Level O) about anchored boat lighthouses.

4. Snowflake Bentley

Snowflakes are miracles to little Wilson Bentley. He loved them so much, he wanted to capture them - in pictures. If he could do so, he would be the first one.

His endeavor to capture snowflakes via photography led us to two discoveries - all snowflakes are unique and each one is naturally beautiful.

The woodblock cut prints in this book especially add to the story in this book. That this story combines reading with a scientific endeavor makes it all the more worthwhile. It is a non-fiction book appropriate for little readers, with a more complex reading level.

Guided Reading Level: N

Wilson Bentley's website

The Man Who Walked Between the Towers

Mirette on the High Wire

This is an awesome, true story of a tightrope walker who put a cable between the World Trade Center towers in 1974. He tightrope walked across the two towers and then some.

The story would come across as almost fantastical to young children, but it really did happen - which makes it all the more awesome.

Guided Reading Level: Q

Mirette meets a famous tightrope walker who has been sidelined because of fear. Of course, once she knows what he used to do, she wants to learn to tightrope walk too. And she does.

Once she learns, she encourages The Great Bellini to abandon fear and try again too. Youthful spirit shines through in this book.

While The Man Who Walked Between the Towers is non-fiction, this book is fiction and would make a nice comparative study.

Guided Reading Level: P

Complex Multi-Cultural Books for Little Readers

Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears

This is a fun story and an interesting way to explain why mosquitoes buzz in people's ears. There are animals who talk, explanations given, and different-than-the-rest kinds of illustrations.

It is a beautiful and entertaining folktale.

Guided Reading Level: N

Lon Po Po: A Red-Riding Hood Story from China

This is a straight-forward rendering of The Little Red Riding Hood, except the wolf comes to the children.

Once the children realize it is a wolf who has come to visit, instead of grandma, they trick the wolf into leaving them alone.

It has a bit of an abrupt ending, so be prepared for that.

Guided Reading Level: S
This would make a great read-aloud, especially in a fairytale unit and with children who know the western version.

Bonus! This is another spin on a classic fairytale that will satisfy more sophisticated readers.

The True Story of the Three Little Pigs

Guided Reading Level: Q

A Story, A Story

This is the folktale about how it all began - how we got all of our stories.

Ananse must complete 3 arduous tasks in order to receive the box full of stories from Nyame, the Sky God.

Ananse completes the tasks and releases the stories to the world.

Guided Reading Level: O

Always Room for One More

This is a Scottish folk song that is put down in book format, so there are some unfamiliar words. There is a glossary at the back to help the reader (as well as the tune to the song, if you'd like).

The story is a good behavior lesson - do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It's about a Scotsman who invites every passerby into his house - until, it explodes!

They gather all the pieces and build a larger house to fit the family, new guests and friends.

This would make a good read aloud book with your child, so you can help with some foreign pronunciations.

Guided Reading Level: P

Enjoy!

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Wonder Playlist

What to do with this playlist

Wonder playlist, via iTunes:

And...Lily's Ideal Bookshelf

Quick Literacy Tip: Book Bins for Babysitters

Picking a Book to Read Together at Home

Quick Literacy Tip: Sing Out Loud

Boy Readers and Banned Books

That's Punny! and Here's Why That's Great

Award Winning Beverly Cleary

Quick Literacy Tip: Postcards

Complex Storybooks for Little Readers

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What to do with this playlist

Wonder playlist, via iTunes: ​

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