10 reading questions to ask your child
How can parents ask good questions without reading the book? Every parent wants to ask good questions to help their child stretch their reading comprehension but who has time to pre read all the books and come up with good questions? This list of 10 reading questions will help you support your child’s literacy development and start critical thinking discussions. Whenever I ask critical thinking reading comprehension questions of students, I always expect them to tell why they think that. Teach your child to answer the question and tell why. I reassure students that there may be more than one right answer and telling why or giving proof from the text will help their answer to be understood better. Here are 10 reading questions you can personalize and use to ask your child about what they are reading regardless of the book or their school grade level. Ask one or two of these at a time and give plenty of thinking time if needed. What made you select this book? What character are you most/least like? Would you be friends with the main character if they lived next door? What is the crisis in the story and how…
Book Review: Ida B
When was the last time you had a day when things went from righter than right to a million miles beyond wrong? Years ago, my oldest daughter read Ida B… and Her Plans to Maximize Fun, Avoid Disaster and (Possibly) Save the World in a book club in elementary school and got to attend a book signing with the author Katherine Hannigan at a local bookstore. Being a teacher, I read the book and instantly fell in love with the story, all the various characters and the strong emotions the story described when Ida B’s life suddenly goes from righter than right to a million miles beyond wrong. I knew it would make a good read aloud book for my fourth grade class launching many discussions, teachable moments, and language arts examples. The description of how much the dog Rufus drools is a great one for figurative language examples. Ida B is just a great book all around. The book is gentle in some areas: very general description of Mama’s illness and strong in others: Ida B’s thoughts on many topics are bold and self-deprecating. Ida B believes that there is never enough time in the world for all the…
Free easy way to improve reading achievement
What is one free and easy way to improve student reading achievement? Many parents want a quick fix and seek tutoring for students who are below reading level. While tutoring is a great option and I can remediate phonic, teach syllable patterns, practice oral reading fluency, and evaluate comprehension, what students also need is daily reading practice to improve student reading achievement. It’s free and easy and yet many parents do not see the value of it. Daily reading of 15-30 minutes can help improve reading achievement significantly. Check out this report for some shocking statistics. According to studies by Renaissance Learning on K-12 reading, “the majority of students spend fewer than 15 minutes per day reading, but increasing their daily reading time to 30 minutes can improve comprehension and boost student achievement.” Summer is a good time to set aside daily reading time where families read a variety of material and model good reading habits. Do not miss out on the benefits of daily reading to improve student reading achievement. Reading should not be confined to fiction! Read an instruction booklet with your child or a travel guide. Read online reviews for a restaurant or a menu. Read…
Backyard Book Clubs
Want to encourage reading, practice speaking and listening skills, and have fun with your kids? Host a Backyard Book Club! My brand new Backyard Book Club Kit has all you need – just add books and kids! Don’t worry! There isn’t one right way to run a book club and you don’t need a backyard. All you need is some enthusiasm, a kid, a book, and this kit. Book clubs and reading help kids develop empathy, relate to characters, practice speaking and listening skills, and learn about the world around them. This 16-page customizable book club kit makes it easy to get started. You know your kids and their reading levels the best so the books here are just a recommendation to get you started. The suggested plans are aimed at grades 3-8 but are easily customizable for other ages. This kit is great for parents, teachers, tutors, grandparents, camps, backyards or Zoom meetings, and club leaders. The kit is an instant download upon purchase once your order goes through. I’ve been so excited to take my classroom experiences and turn it into an easy to use product that families can use at home this summer, whether they have reluctant…
Book Review: It Must’ve Been Something I Ate
Leading Question? It Must’ve Been Something I Ate by Jeffrey Steingarten, best selling author of The Man Who Ate Everything has been on my nightstand for months. Not because it is a neglected book, but because it is so good but so long! No book recently has increased my vocabulary and knowledge like this book by a former lawyer transmuted into food writer. Why say friendliness when you could use conviviality to describe the perfect holiday dinner party? Why kill a lobster by boiling it alive when you can research all the conflicting ways to humanely kill a lobster at home before turning it into a lobster roll served on top sliced hot dog bun? It is categorized as “cooking essays” but it also clearly falls into the category of humor books. Food critic, Jeffery Steingarten is obsessed with investigating recipes, culinary techniques, ingredients, and replicating it at home, whether or not the ingredients are easy or legal to obtain. Never have I wanted to try more tricky recipes like pizza bianca in “Flat Out” after I read pages of sampling the percent of protein in the milled flour around the world or the mineral content of the water in…
10 Read Aloud Books for the Younger Years
What is your favorite picture book from your childhood? Reading aloud is so important in the younger years. It teaches a love of reading, models fluency, introduces vocabulary, builds curiosity, and opens the door for great discussions. These picture books I like for the writing and the illustrations, especially the colored pencil art in Albert and the watercolors and postcards in Toot and Puddle. Several stories are about overcoming fears, making friends, travel adventures, and family. Some have sensitive topics that will take careful discussion, but what better place to have these conversations than in your own living room. I took a walk down memory lane and pulled these off my bookshelf. Some I read to my own kids and some were from my classroom. Below are 10 of my favorites for read aloud books for the younger years (or actually for any age!). Just pulling these favorite books off my shelf has brought me joy and a flood of memories from my classroom and my own children in their younger years. I am looking forward to reading these to my grandchildren! A Pig Parade is a Terrible Idea by Michael Ian Black and Kevin Hawkes “Like most…
Book Review: When Words Matter Most
When do words matter most? Just as I was finishing working through the book Truthfilled: The Practice of Preaching to Yourself Through Every Season by Ruth Chou Simons, a friend gave me a copy of the book When Words Matter Most: Speaking Truth with Grace to Those You Love by Cheryl Marshall and Caroline Newheiser. These two books go hand in hand. Colossians 3:16 says “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” We must first let the Word of Truth dwell in us. We must preach truth to ourselves. This is where Truthfilled is helpful. It’s not a self help book but a beautifully illustrated and practical reminder that in the trials of life, the truth of God is unchanging and life changing. This book is a 7 session study that you can do on your own or with a group. The art alone is worth a view! When Words Matter Most takes this concept to the next level. Once we have internalized this truth, we can then share it with others, strengthening and encouraging them…
Book Review: Lazy Genius Kitchen
Where do you put your dirty dishes in your kitchen? We all have routines. In my house the dirty dishes go to the left of the sink before they get loaded into the dishwasher, which hopefully happens shortly thereafter. Best selling author Kendra Adachi writes Lazy Genius Kitchen so we can “have what you need, use what you have, and enjoy it like never before.” Do my dishes go to the left of the sink because that’s where there’s more counter space or because that’s the dirty dishes zone that frees up all the rest of my kitchen space for other things? Recently a friend loaned me this book and said it is much like how I already run my household. That was true! The book is a “slightly sassy” guidebook to organizing your kitchen using the Lazy Genius Principles. Adachi gives the framework to prioritize what matters most in your kitchen and build a system that makes it easy for you to enjoy your kitchen and mealtimes. This book is jam packed with helpful references on how to cook, how to make meals taste good, how to use kitchen tools, and how to simplify all the tasks and hard…
20 Read Aloud Books for the Middle Years
What was your favorite read aloud as an elementary or middle school child? Most parents think of read aloud as something you do at bedtime for preschoolers, but read aloud is valuable at any age. It is especially helpful during the middle years as upper elementary and middle school kids are learning to think critically and to make sense of the world around them. Reading aloud and discussing it helps you guide and stretch their thinking. As a fourth grade teacher, my students and I loved read aloud time. It was a great way to teach across subjects and objectives, and it leveled the playing field for the wide range of reading abilities in my classroom. The discussions were rich and the “five extra minutes of read aloud” was a highly coveted prize in my weekly ticket drawing. I often found my parent volunteers listening to it as well. There are so many new books and books lists available by categories online, but I tend to favor older forgotten books that not every kid has read already. I look for books that have a strong character and often a topic that’s a bit of a controversy so we can have…
Libraries
When was the last time you visited a public library? The other day I had a half hour of time before an appointment so I stopped in at my local library to get some cookbooks for stepping up my weekly menu planning. I lost track of time and was almost late for my appointment. I forgot how much I loved free public libraries! Every season of my life has library memories, from filling a huge canvas bag of books as an elementary kid to checking out a big bag of books as a young mom with toddlers. We have Googled local libraries on rainy vacation days at the beach, visited library story times while traveling, and found joy in perusing the shelves of public libraries and bookstores across the country whether or not we take any books home. As a young mom, I got a new cookbook every time I took my kids to the library. Recently I had houseguests with school age kids for a few months and we took regular visits to the library where I told them they could get as many books as they could carry. Benjamin Franklin started his own lending library company in 1731…