Reading
Many parents have asked about how to support their child's reading at home and how to ensure they are reading at grade level. There are many factors that are considered when determining the child's reading level. We use leveled books to assess their reading level based on fluency, decoding strategies, and comprehension.
When children have the opportunity to be read to and to read to others they will develop greater fluency naturally. The main goal is for students to become effective readers. They are expected to not only state the facts and ideas communicated in the text but to apply those ideas. As stated in the Ontario Language Curriculum document, students must be able to think clearly, creatively, and critically about the ideas and information encountered in texts in order to understand, analyse, and absorb them and to recognize their relevance in other contexts. Reading is a complex process that involves the application of many strategies before, during, and after reading. Students are taught and encouraged to use various comprehension strategies including:
- Predicting: make predictions based on prior knowledge or information in the text before and during reading
- Visualizing: develop mental images to develop a rich understanding of the text
- Questioning: develop questions to further one's knowledge and understanding of a text
- Drawing Inferences: make inferences about texts using stated and implied ideas from the texts as evidence
- Identifying Main Ideas: develop an understanding of main idea and supporting details by identifying the main idea and discussing how the supporting details relate to the main idea
- Summarizing: identifying the important facts/details from the text in order to summarize the main idea of the text
- Analyzing: identify specific elements of texts and explain how they contribute to the meaning of the texts
- Making Connections: extend understanding of texts by connecting ideas in them to their own knowledge, experience, and to the world around them
The best way to support your child's reading development is to encourage discussions based on the texts they are reading. Some ways to encourage reading in the home can include:
- Family Book Club (within your own family, with another family in the community, or a family that lives far away and communicate via skype)
- Family reading time. There are many family friendly books that cover a wide range of ages.
- Planning a trip as a family and have your child(ren) help with research
- Extend your child's positive reading experience. If your child enjoyed reading a book about dinosaurs you could extend their interest by visiting the Museum of Nature. This will help them make connections.
- Regular visits to the Carp Library. Your child can get their own library card and sign out books themselves. Not only will this encourage reading but will help with responsibility and independence.
Websites to support reading at home
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