Barkus

Newbery Medalist, Patricia MacLachlan, has written a charming beginning chapter book about a girl and her dog. Barkus is a gift from Nicky's Uncle Everton. Barkus is smart, he does tricks and he doesn't bite. Perfect! In five chapters, Barkus becomes class pet in Nicky's classroom, has a birthday party, finds and mothers a newborn kitten and goes on a backyard campout with Nicky and the kitten.

Dog lovers will love this book, I have had a dog like Barkus and I bet many of you have, too.

The full color illustrations by Marc Boutavant animate the story. The font is large and the words are well spaced. Emerging readers and older reluctant readers will find this beneficial. If you look closely at the tag on Barkus' collar, you will see it says "Book 1". A sequel is due out next year.

The Sonoma County Library has five copies. Great book for first and second grade classrooms.

50 Ways to Help Your Child Learn to Read

School starts here in a couple of days. Yulupa is a K-3 school, so learning to read is a big part of what goes on here. Learning to read starts at birth, it is a complicated process. Both teachers and parents have a role to play.  Allison McDonald from No Time for Flashcards has a list of 50 ways  to help your child learn to read.  The most important thing a parent can do is to read and talk to their child starting at birth. Some of my favorites on her include rhyming games, getting a magazine subscription (what kid doesn't like to get mail?), and let them choose their own books at the library or in the store. One more way that she alludes to is pointing out environmental print: stop signs, names of stores, billboards, street sign and exit signs. I think most of us knew what a stop sign said before we could read the words in a book but didn't think of it as "reading".

Reading and Bookish Links

This week let's start off with a fun quiz to see how many of the 100 Best Children's Books of All Time you have read. I got 69 of 100. Bonus feature: it makes a great list of book ideas for the kids in your life.

Some young kids pick up reading quickly and want to read chapter books. They may be good readers but the content of books they can read is not age appropriate. Ellen from the Cutting Tiny Bites blog has done the hard work of compiling and reviewing a list of chapter books for very young readers. Hat tip: Growing Book By Book

Would you like a way to check your beginning reader's progress? Reading Is Fundamental has a Reading Check up for Beginning Readers (Grades 1/2) to help.

Jodie Rodriguez from Growing Book By Book wrote a guest post at parenting blog, Childhood 101, How to Support an Early Reader. Her five tips include understanding a new reader, coaching a new reader, modeling fluency, checking for understanding and picking "just right books". Scroll down to see links to other articles by Jodie about beginning readers.

Parents are their child's first teacher. It is their job to lay the ground work for future success  in school. That job begins at birth. Maya Smart from Book Riot has a quiz for parents to see how they are doing in Are You Raising A Reader?

Along this same theme is An Expert's Opinion: What Parents Can Do That Apps Can't. There are many commercial programs and apps that claim to teach young children to read. Brightly has published an excerpt from Tara Haelle and Emily Willingham's The Informed Parent: A Science Based Resource for Your Child's First Four Years. Their research-based advice for parents is talking and reading to children from birth and having lots of books around. Just handling (or even chewing) books is an early literacy behavior.

Sight Words

Yulupa uses a phonics based reading program, but there are plenty of commonly used words in the English language that do not follow the the “Rules”. These words are called Sight Words: the, and, see, come, go, know; you get the drift. By the end of first grade a child should know over a hundred of these words.

 This Reading Mama has a great article about the development of word learning as it pertains to sight words. Most of the students we see in Schools of Hope are in the second phase. These learners typically know basic letter sounds but not more complex ones like sh or th; they do not have strong decoding skills and rely on pictures and cues like the first and last letter to read words they don’t know.

A Schools of Hope video from Racine, WI has some interesting ideas about teaching sight words called Sound It Out?

Sight words are  introduced in the classroom gradually. Schools of Hope tutors review current sight words with their students every week. There are fun ways to do this. I have a couple of Sight Word Bingo games and a Picture Word Bingo game. 

I found these games locally back when we had a teacher store in town but they are available like almost everything else, at Amazon. Another game that kids like to play is Pop for Sight Words. There is a second version appropriate for late first grade and second grade.  I found the original game here in town but it both are also available at Amazon.

The Reading Mama, Becky Spence, has more than a dozen free printable sight word games here. Scroll down to the list under sight words and click on any of the games that interest you. All of these games are far more fun than drilling with flash cards while accomplishing the same goal.

Chapter Books for Beginning Readers

Nerdy Book Club contributor, Arika Dickens, has written an article about books she thinks are surefire hits for transitioning readers to chapter books. An added bonus is that all but The Year of Billy Miller by Kevin Henkes are the first in a trilogy or series. You can find her post here. Some of these books have been reviewed on this blog: Lulu and the Brontosaurus, Dory Fantasmagory and Bink and Gollie. Please note that two of these books are written by two time Newbery Medalist  Kate DiCamillo. It is wonderful that such a distinguished author is writing for beginning readers.

Hat tip: Growing Book by Book

Sight Words

Yulupa uses a phonics based reading program, but there are plenty of commonly used words in the English language that do not follow the the “Rules”. These words are called Sight Words: the, and, see, come, go, know; you get the drift. By the end of first grade a child should know over a hundred of these words.

 This Reading Mama has a great article about the development of word learning as it pertains to sight words. Most of the students we see in Schools of Hope are in the second phase. These learners typically know basic letter sounds but not more complex ones like sh or th; they do not have strong decoding skills and rely on pictures and cues like the first and last letter to read words they don’t know.

Sight words are  introduced in the classroom gradually. Schools of Hope tutors review current sight words with their students every week. There are fun ways to do this. I have a couple of Sight Word Bingo games and a Picture Word Bingo game.

I found these games locally back when we had a teacher store in town but they are available like almost everything else, at Amazon. Another game that kids like to play is Pop for Sight Words. There is a second version appropriate for late first grade and second grade.  I found the original game here in town but it both are also available at Amazon.

The Reading Mama, Becky Spence, has more than a dozen free printable sight word games here. Scroll down to the list under sight words and click on any of the games that interest you. All of these games are far more fun than drilling with flash cards while accomplishing the same goal.

Reading Fluency

The Room Mom has a post up today about helping your child improve her reading fluency with lots of practical tips. If your child is doing a lot of reading on her own, do you know if she comprehends what she is reading? One of the things I see frequently with second graders is that they change words they do not know into something they think would fit. Doing this occasionally is not catastrophic but it can become a bad habit that will affect your child’s understanding of what she reads. See also The Five Finger Rule to help find books that are just right.

Thought For Today

From Ebook Friendly on Tumblr

10 Ways your Child Can Become a Better Reader

It is simple: to do something well, practice is necessary. The more your child reads, the better reader he becomes. Thanks to Melissa Taylor at the Imagination Soup blog for this graphic.

Thought For Today

Reading should not be presented to children as a chore or a duty. It should be offered to them as a precious gift. – Kate DiCamillo

Hat tip: Imagination Soup

Reading Comprehension Strategies

Is your child able to understand what he reads? Melissa Taylor has outlined strategies that parents can use to determine if their child is comprehending what they are reading and what to do to help them learn. These techniques are for beginning to advanced readers:  Part I and Part II.

Hat Tip: Imagination Soup