The Reading Room
Welcome to Trimester 1 of the Reading Specialist Program
Off to a Great Start!!!
It was so exciting to begin reading classes this week. I have really enjoyed getting to know all of your children. This week we played an ice breaker to learn more about each other. Each student completed an interest inventory sharing their favorite activities, games and books with me. Finally, we explored the books in my classroom and chose our first text to begin reading.
Read With Your Child!!!
Most nights, your child will bring home a book from my classroom. They will have a chapter or some pages assigned for homework. This reading counts as their homework reading (as assigned by the classroom teacher). It is important that you read with your child and share in their experience.
Talk With Your Child About Reading
In each newsletter, I will provide sentence starters for beginning conversations with your child about their reading. You can discuss books before, during and after reading. These sentence starters go along with the reading comprehension strategies we will focus on throughout the trimester. Your child will receive a bookmark with the strategies on it for reference at home as well.
Using the ASD Library
Encourage your child to choose "just right books" from the ASD library on their designated check-out day each week. They are allowed to borrow 4 books each week (if all books are returned). Parents can also check-out library books. Look for more information on library materials and resources in coming newsletters.
The Battle of the Books-BOB
Students in fourth and fifth grade are gearing up for the Battle of the Books competition. Ten books were selected for this year's challenge. You can see the titles below. Although third graders are not part of the competition, they do get to watch the finals and they really enjoy the experience. All students in UE can read or listen to these wonderful titles. Please consider downloading the BOB texts for your kindle or ipad. You can also listen to the books with your child as audio books. This is a fantastic opportunity to expose your child to a variety of genres.
Please visit the ASD library website (below) for more information about each book. There is a Battle of the Books tab at the top of the Elementary page.