Growing Readers Together
December Tips for Second and Third Grade Parents
Reading Strategies
When your child reaches an unknown word, it is important to let him/her use reading strategies to try to read the word. Here are reading strategy tips your child can use to figure out any word they don't know.
How to Help Your Child With Comprehension
Understanding what we read is the primary goal of all reading. One strategy to help deepen comprehension is making connections. As your child reads, ask him to think about and relate his own experiences and knowledge to the story or text that he is reading. He should connect the text to his own life or to other books he has read. Stop reading every now and then to allow your child to share with you the connections he is making. He should say things like, "This part reminds me of _____." or "This makes me think of _______." Share your own comments, too, as you read with your child.
Fluency
Fluency refers to the way reading sounds. Fluent readers pay attention to punctuation. They read in smooth phrases at an appropriate pace using necessary expression. Here are some ways to help your child practice reading with expression.
- Read a short passage from a book aloud to your child. Show him how you stop at punctuation and how you use expression when reading. Let your child practice reading the same passage two or three times.
- Practice reading a passage using different voices (ex. robot voice and race car voice). Ask your child what is wrong with each voice. Then read the passage correctly.
Word Work
Being able to hear and manipulate the sounds in words is an important predictor of success in reading. This month we are working on r controlled vowels. These words are sometimes called bossy r words (ex. car, far, her, sir, for, and fur). Here are some ideas to use when practicing this skill.
- Ask your child to help you think of some words that have ar in them. Write each word in a row on a chart or dry erase board. Repeat this for er, ir, or, and ur words.
- Write some ar, er, ir, or, and ur words on index cards (one word per card). Let your child sort the index cards.