Category Archives: asking questions

How to Raise a Reader, according to The New York Times

Posted on July 3, 2017 | Leave a comment

The New York Times published  an excellent article last month entitled, “How to Raise a Reader.”  You might find the article at your library in the Book Review section.  It is worth the effort.  Here are some highlights from “How to Raise a Reader.”

Become a reader yourself.  If you have let your reading habit slip, reacquaint yourself with the print world.

Read aloud to your infant.  Your reading material might be a medical journal or Dr. Seuss.  The content doesn’t matter to an infant.  What does matter is that you make eye contact with your child, use voice inflection, and read in the normal rhythms of your language.  If the baby responds with baby sounds, respond in kind.

Read aloud to your toddler.  Encourage your child to link the sound of your voice reading to him with strong, positive emotions.  Read at bedtime and during daytime too.  Offer your child variety in picture books, but respect his or her preferences, even if that means reading “Go, Dog, Go” night after night.  When the child interrupts, that shows he is engaged.  Stop and respond.  Finishing a book isn’t all that important at this age nor is reading every word.

Continue to read aloud to your emerging reader.  Once your child shows interest in letters and words, keep reading to him or her.  Encourage her to join in, but don’t pull back now.  She shouldn’t think of reading as work.  She should think of it as fun.  Allow your child to develop reading skills at her own pace, but if you suspect problems, follow through with her teacher.

Continue to read aloud to your early reader.  Take him or her to the library or book store.  Expand his selections from fiction to nonfiction.  Ask him and his friends what they are reading and discuss their preferences.  Let your child stay up a bit later if she reads in bed.  If your child prefers comic books or graphic novels, or if he wants to read about his favorite video game, be thrilled.  He’s reading.

Stash reading materials throughout the house. On the coffee table, in the bathroom, or in the bedroom, show off books, magazines and other reading materials to encourage reading.

Help your child build a personal library.  Make a bookcase part of the child’s bedroom or a children’s section of books part of your home library.  Give books as gifts and rewards.  Bring home armloads of books from the library.  Celebrate your child’s first library card with family stories of other first library cards.

This wonderful New York Times article goes on to describe the kinds of books children are ready for at different times in their lives.  Enjoy.

 

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Posted in asking questions, early childhood education, how to make learning fun, learning in infancy, listening, picture books, practice reading skills, reading strategies, reading tips, teaching tips

How to build reading comprehension skills in a child who can’t read yet

Posted on May 14, 2017 | Leave a comment

Though toddlers can’t read, they can begin to learn the comprehension skills they will need when they do read.  Here’s one way you can help.

Improve their listening comprehension by orally quizzing them—as playfully as possible—when you read stories to them.

Ask them questions after each page or each part of a story. “Now I forget.  Is Little Red Riding Hood going to her grandmother’s house or her big sister’s house?”  In this case you offer two suggestions, one of which is correct, and the children can choose the correct answer.

Later, as the children grow, ask them to supply the answer. “How many little pigs were there?”  “Was one of the houses made out of leaves?”

Questions about the sequencing of a story encourage children to pay attention to what comes at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end. “When did Sylvester find the magic pebble?  Was it at the beginning of the story or at the end?”

Questions about the setting encourage children to pay attention to the where and when of a story.  “I think Cinderella lived in a tent.  What do you think?”

As much as possible, make the quizzing seem like a game. Use gestures, facial animation and your “big, bad wolf” voice.  Limit the number of questions you ask to the child’s age plus one so the child doesn’t tire of this activity.

Some children will enjoy asking you the questions. Go for it.  This will make the activity seem more game-like since in a game, everybody gets a chance.

If you make remembering information and asking questions a normal part of telling stories, children are apt to bring this habit to the stories they read themselves.

 

 

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Posted in asking questions, comprehension, listening, methods of teaching reading, practice reading skills, reading comprehension

Is my child on schedule to read?

Posted on April 11, 2017 | Leave a comment

The US Department of Education has put together a list of accomplishments* relating to talking and reading for children from birth to six years old.  This list shows the growth of typical children developing normally, but variations exist.  By seven years old, most children are reading.

From birth to age 3, most babies and toddlers become able to

  • Make sounds that imitate the tones and rhythms that adults use when talking.
  • Respond to gestures and facial expressions.
  • Begin to associate words they hear frequently with what the words mean.
  • Make cooing, babbling sounds in the crib, which gives way to enjoying rhyming and nonsense word games with a parent or caregiver.
  • Play along in games such as “peek-a-boo” and “pat-a-cake.”
  • Handle objects such as board books and alphabet blocks in their play.
  • Recognize certain books by their covers.
  • Pretend to read books.
  • Understand how books should be handled.
  • Share books with an adult as a routine part of life.
  • Name some objects in a book.
  • Talk about characters in books.
  • Look at pictures in books and realize they are symbols of real things.
  • Listen to stories.
  • Ask or demand that adults read or write with them.
  • Begin to pay attention to specific print such as the first letters of their names.
  • Scribble with a purpose (trying to write or draw something).
  • Produce some letter-like forms and scribbles that resemble, in some way, writing.

From ages 3-4, most preschoolers become able to

  • Enjoy listening to and talking about storybooks.
  • Understand that print carries a message.
  • Make attempts to read and write.
  • Identify familiar signs and labels.
  • Participate in rhyming games.
  • Identify some letters and make some letter-sound matches.
  • Use known letters (or their best attempt to write the letters) to represent written language especially for meaningful words like their names or phrases such as “I love you.”

At age 5, most kindergartners become able to

mother works with child reading story book

  • Sound as if they are reading when they pretend to read.
  • Enjoy being read to.
  • Retell simple stories.
  • Use descriptive language to explain or to ask questions.
  • Recognize letters and letter-sound matches.
  • Show familiarity with rhyming and beginning sounds.
  • Understand that print is read left-to-right and top-to-bottom.
  • Begin to match spoken words with written ones.
  • Begin to write letters of the alphabet and some words they use and hear often.
  • Begin to write stories with some readable parts.

At age 6, most first-graders can

Young child writing C-A-T.

  • Read and retell familiar stories.
  • Use a variety of ways to help with reading a story such as rereading, predicting what will happen, asking questions, or using visual cues or pictures.
  • Decide on their own to use reading and writing for different purposes;
  • Read some things aloud with ease.
  • Identify new words by using letter-sound matches, parts of words and their understanding of the rest of a story or printed item.
  • Identify an increasing number of words by sight.
  • Sound out and represent major sounds in a word when trying to spell.
  • Write about topics that mean a lot to them.
  • Try to use some punctuation marks and capitalization.

*Based on information from Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children, a report of the National Research Council, by the Committee on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children, 1998; and from the Joint Position Statement of the International Reading Association (IRA) and the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), 1998.

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Posted in ABC's, asking questions, kindergarten readiness, learning in infancy, letter sounds, literacy, phonics, picture books, reading readiness., reading research, US education

How to make reading anything easier

Posted on March 12, 2017 | Leave a comment

boy reading on the floorBefore you read:

  • Read the title and look at the photos, drawings, charts, and maps. Try to figure out what they mean without reading  the text.
  • Read the subheadings. Ask yourself, “What is this about?”  Try to predict the topic you will be reading about.
  • Read vocabulary words out loud, find out how to pronounce them (ask an adult) and ask or look up what they mean.  If there are vocabulary words in the margins, or if words are highlighted in the text, they are there because they are important and because you might not know them.

girl with ipad in bed

While you read:

  • Figure out the main idea. Usually in nonfiction it is named at the end of the first paragraph.  If you own the book, underline the main idea.  If not, start a mind web with the main idea in the middle.
  • Figure out what details are important. Add those to your mind web.  It’s easier to study a mind web than it is to study a whole lot of paragraphs.
  • Highlight or write down every word you don’t understand.
    • Look for clues in the nearby words.
    • Ask an adult to help you.
    • Or look up the words in a dictionary.  Write down what they mean, and read over the words and meanings until you know them.
  • If something is difficult or confusing, ask an adult to explain it.
  • Define important words on your mind web.
  • Summarize each paragraph into one or two sentences to be sure you understand it.  If you can write down what it means, you understand.

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Posted in asking questions, learning, literacy, practice reading skills, reading comprehension, reading strategies, teaching tips, vocabulary, writing makes better readers

Talk to babies, even before they are born

Posted on February 26, 2017 | Leave a comment

Recently I visited my two-month-old grandson for a week.  As much as possible, I held him.  And when he was awake, I talked to him.

EPSON MFP image

I would look into his alert grey eyes and jabber on and on—about the inch of snow expected, about a book I had read, about what a terrible burper he was.  I used the same adult vocabulary I would use to talk to you but perhaps with more inflection and facial animation.

His eyes would follow me but mostly he would listen—listen to me describing the soft, touchable fabric of his onesie, or listen to my theories about why he slept so little.  I would ask him questions. “What do you want for lunch?  Milk or milk?  Do you want to look over my shoulder or look straight ahead?  How’s your diaper?”  He stared back attentively at first, but by the end of the week when I would talk to him, he would smile, quiver and say, “oo, oo,” the only sound he could make.

Now there is research which confirms that babies not only hear before birth but once they are born, they prefer to hear the language they have heard in utero.  Above all newborns prefer to hear the voice of their mothers, but next in priority they prefer to hear the voices of people who speak the same language as the mother, voices with the same rhythms.

We know that phonemes—the basic sound units of language—can be recognized by new babies in the weeks following birth.  Previously it was thought that babies couldn’t recognize slight differences in language sounds until the babies were several months old.  But now we know that babies’ sound perception and preference begins in the womb.

How can we help new babies to develop language skills?

EPSON MFP image

  • Pregnant women should talk to their babies before birth. They should provide opportunities for unborn children to hear language spoken.  This can mean babies’ overhearing conversations between mother and father; it can mean babies’ overhearing phone conversations or radio news; it can mean babies’ hearing the mother talk to herself.  Little ears are listening, so we should give them language to hear.
  • Newborn babies are far from “empty-headed.” Already they have heard hundreds, maybe thousands of hours of spoken language, and have developed a preference for the language of their mothers.  Once born, babies are refining their understanding of that language’s sounds as they listen to their caregivers’ speech.  We should provide opportunities for babies to hear speech—while mothers are feeding babies, while caregivers are changing babies’ diapers, while grandparents are holding babies.
  • Babies’ brains are functioning at an abstract level from their earliest days. They hear phonemes like the sound of “m” in “milk,” and then hear that same “m” sound in “mom,” and learn that the same sounds are used over and over with different results.  Years later, they will take this knowledge and apply it when they learn to read.

Did you know that according to a 1995 study*, the most important thing we can do while caring for a child is to talk to the child?  Or that the three-year-old children of well educated, professional parents hear three times as many words as the three-year-old children of poorly educated parents?

In fact if you listen to the vocabulary of a child, you can predict his success in life.  That’s how strong the correlation is between vocabulary and career success.

Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk to your children, including your babies.  If you have never chatted with an infant, swallow your pride and allow yourself to seem foolish.  It’s one of the best things you can do to ensure your child’s future success.

*Hart, B and Risley, T.  (1995).  Meaningful differences in the everyday experiences of young American children.  Baltimore:  Paul Brookes.

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Posted in asking questions, fluency, how to make learning fun, learning, learning in infancy, literacy, vocabulary

How to make kids better readers

Posted on December 11, 2016 | Leave a comment

Renaissance Learning offers many ways to make children better readers.  Here are some of their suggestions.

“Give your students more choices.” Let children choose which books to read from a huge selection, both fiction and nonfiction.Young girl 's reading choices include a print book and an eBook.Young girl 's reading choices include a print book and an eBook.

Make sure the reading level is just right.”  A useful gauge is to count the number of words a student misses on a single page.  If it is five or more, that book is probably too hard and will discourage children from reading.

“Devote time to reading practice.”  Designate a certain time every day—before bed, before the morning school bus or during the school day—for reading.  Children will look forward to this time, especially if it is part of a routine.boy reading on the floor

“Build relationships with daily check-ins.” During reading time, talk to your child.  Comment on what he is reading.  Let him know you care.

“Make reading practice a social experience.” Read together with a child, one page for her, one page for you.  Or after you read, discuss what you and the child like and don’t like.

“Create a book-store style display.” On the bookshelf, show off books by their jackets or front covers to encourage a child to choose that book.  Display books you have read so you can talk to the child about why you like the book and why he might.girl reading Junie B. Jones

“Read aloud to students of all ages.” When you read to a younger child, you expose him to books whose ideas he can grasp even though the vocabulary might be difficult for his reading level.  When you read to an older child, you introduce genres which the child might not choose, and you model comprehension strategies such as predicting, asking questions and summarizing.

“Acknowledge and celebrate success.” Praise your child for his reading.  Create a spot to post his reading accomplishments—names of books and articles read, or number of pages read.

For more detailed information, go to http://doc.renlearn.com/KMNet/R60386.pdf.

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Posted in asking questions, methods of teaching reading, practice reading skills, reading comprehension, reading strategies, teaching tips, vocabulary

What kinds of questions help students learn?

Posted on October 26, 2016 | Leave a comment

Asking the right kinds of questions can help students learn, according to Robert J. Marzano*, an expert in the field.  He divides questions into four kinds, those that elicit

Students shouting I Know to teacher

  • details (narrow information or facts),
  • characteristics (general information about the category into which the details fit),
  • elaborations (enhanced details about the information within a category, including the reasons why certain things happen) and
  • evidence (sources that bolster or debunk the reasoning made by the student when elaborating, or reconsideration by the student of his own thinking and logic ).

Let’s apply his ideas to some reading that children do.

For third graders reading Judy Blume’s Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great,

  • Details: What are some things Sheila is afraid of?  Where does Sheila live most of the time?  Where does she go on vacation?
  • Characteristics: Is Sheila the Great a book of fiction or nonfiction?  What kind of fiction?  Can you name some other books that fit into this category?
  • Elaborations:  Why is Sheila afraid to learn to swim?  Why are other kids afraid to swim?  Are they the same reasons why some kids are afraid to ride bikes or to touch spiders?
  • Evidence: Where could you find information about why kids are afraid to swim?  If you use the internet, what key words would you use to find out?  If you talked to a person, what person would be an expert?  a non-expert?

For preschoolers being read William Steig’s Sylvester and the Magic Pebble,

  • Details: What kind of animal is Sylvester?  Where does Sylvester find the magic pebble?  What kind of animal scares Sylvester?
  • Characteristics: Are there really such things as magic pebbles?  What do we call stories that are make-believe?  Can you think of another make-believe story?  Why do children like make-believe stories?
  • Elaborations: Why is Sylvester sad after no one can see him?  Why are his parents sad?  Would I be sad if you were lost like Sylvester?
  • Evidence: If you became lost, who could you go to so I could find you?  What would be some information about me that you could tell the police?

Each level of questions becomes harder to answer, so if you use this questioning strategy, begin with details questions and work your way to harder questions. The first two levels, details and characteristics, can be asked of a group, but the other two levels require more thought and might better be considered through discussion.  Evidence-based questions might require time to answer, so might be given as homework, or be talked over again when the child has had time to consider his response.

To make this line of questioning easy on you, the parent or teacher, think details first, then genre and characteristics of that genre, then questions beginning with “why,” and last sources for more information.

*Marzano heads Marzano Research Laboratory and is author of books on teaching.  He wrote about this questioning technique in the February 2013 issue of Educational Leadership.  For examples of his questioning technique, go to   http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/journals/ed_lead/el201302_marzano.pdf.

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Posted in asking questions, learning, methods of teaching reading, reading research, teaching tips

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