Welcome to Family Involvement Night!
Tonight’s topic: How to help your child with
reading
Kindergarten:
The goal of kindergarten reading is to learn to read!
This is taught through decoding skills and the mastery of sight words.
In class, your child’s teacher is preparing them for much more than just
reading the words off the page, they are teaching them how to think about
what they read.
• With help from the teacher, students retell stories, including key details.
• With help from the teacher, students name the author and illustrator of a
story and define the role of each in telling the story.
• With help from the teacher, students ask and answer questions about key
details in a text.
• With help from the teacher, students identify what person, place, thing, or
idea a picture shows.
Kindergarten Tips
Play a game where
you take a word and
switch out just the
vowel sound, think of
the song I like to eat,
eat, eat apples and
bananas… Make as
many different words
as you can just by
changing the vowel
sound.*
*Words to avoid doing this with: fake, duck, dim…
Cat:
Kate
Kit
Kite
Coat
Cot/Caught
Cut
Cute
Mitt:
Might
Mat
Mate
Met
Meet/Mea
t
Moat
Mutt
Mute
Another great game to play with your kindergartner is to sound
out a word for them and ask them to tell you the word. Call it a
super secret mystery word or something exciting!
Be sure to list the sounds, not the letter names, pausing
between each sound.
This mimics the sounding out they do when they come across a
word they don’t know and they have to sound it out and put the
sounds together to figure the word out.
In 1st grade, your child’s teacher is helping them learn to:
• Students retell stories, including key details, and show that
they understand the lesson or moral of a story.
• Students identify who is telling the story at various points in a
text.
• Students ask and answer questions about key details in a text.
• Students use the illustrations and details in a text to describe
key ideas.
1st Grade Reading Tips
1.Prior to even reading a book with your child, have them do a picture walk and make predictions. This
will help them read more challenging words later.
2. Have them read the story, starting with the title.
If they get stuck on a word, have them look at the first sound and get their mouth ready.
Break the word into parts.
Sound it out.
Look at the picture for clues.
Sound it out.
Skip the word and come back to it.
Once they have tried a word, ask them:
Does it make sense?
Does it look right?
Does it sound right?
3. Read the story again. This is a great strategy for improving fluency.
4. Use the retell hand to retell the story, including every detail they can remember in the order that it
happened.
If they can’t retell the story, read it again or ask yourself, “Was the story too difficult for them?”
All 1st grade students have a Raz Kids account where they can read
books at their level and take quizzes to check their understanding.
2nd Grade
In 2nd grade, your child’s teacher is helping them to:
• Retell stories and determine their central message, lesson, or moral.
• Acknowledge differences in the points of view of characters, including
by speaking in a different voice for each character when reading
dialogue aloud.
• Ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and
how to demonstrate understanding of key details in a text.
• Explain how specific images or illustrations (such as a diagram of how
a machine works) are useful.
Big shift in reading from second to third grade
Reading to learn instead of learning to read.
The skills required for reading should be mostly mastered at this point.
The thing that kids have been working on for their entire school career, being
able to decode the words on the page and verbalize them is not enough
anymore. They now need to understand everything they read because the
purpose of their reading practice is no longer to learn how to do it. The
purpose now is to learn new information by reading it.
Students should work on increasing vocabulary and their fluency.
Federal Law regarding 3rd grade reading
Parent/guardian meetings and intensive improvement strategies are required
for any students who are reading below grade-level and/or are likely to
receive a score of below basic (Level 1) on the 3rd- grade ELA assessment.
At the meeting, the teacher must inform the parents/guardians of:
* reading improvement strategies that will be available to students before 4th
grade; and
* the district's grade placement policy.
For this reason, it is important that students take this test seriously.
Students who are not reading proficiently by 3rd
grade are 4 times more likely to not graduate from
high school.
If their families also live below the federal
poverty line, these same kids are 6 times more
likely not to graduate from high school.
For black and Latino kids, the combined effect of
poor third grade reading skills and poverty makes
them 8 times more likely not to graduate from
high school.
In third grade, your child’s teacher will be helping them learn
to:
• Recount stories and determine the central message, lesson,
or moral, explaining how it is developed in the text.
• Distinguish their own point of view from that of the narrator
or those of the characters.
• Ask and answer questions about what they read by referring
directly to parts of the text.
• Use information gained from images or illustrations.
In fourth grade, your child’s teacher will be helping them learn to:
• Determine the theme of a story, play, or poem from details in the
text and summarize the text.
• Compare and contrast the point of view from which different stories
are told, including the difference between first- and third-person
accounts.
• Refer to details and examples in a text when explaining what the text
says explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
• Interpret information presented in charts, graphs, or other visual
sources of information and explain how the information contributes to
an understanding of the text.
In fifth grade your child’s teacher will be helping them learn to:
• Determine the theme of a story, play, or poem from details in
the text, including how characters respond to challenges or how
the speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic, and students
summarize the text.
• Describe how a narrator’s or speaker’s point of view influences
how events are described.
• Quote accurately from a text when explaining what the text says
explicitly and when drawing inferences from the text.
• Draw on information from multiple print or digital sources,
demonstrating the ability to locate an answer to a question
quickly or to solve a problem efficiently.
Taking 15 minutes out of
your day to read with your
child does so much more
for them than help them
become better readers!
*Your bond grows.
*Their sense of security
grows.
*You are sending a
message to them that they
are worth your time. We
want our kids looking to us
first for self-worth.
Pick a quiet reading
place free from
distractions
whenever possible.
Some families choose
to read at bedtime,
others at breakfast.
Some kids earn
screen time by doing
reading time first and
have an equal swap,
minute for minute.
Blank screen with no sound. It’s called the Reading Channel.
Reading with
your kids is so
important….
But sometimes,
you just… can’t…
even…
If you can’t get into the
books they pick out,
choose a book to read
with them that you
enjoyed as a child.
They will love the
connection to your
childhood, and you will
enjoy the memories.
If you are excited
about it, your kids will
be excited to read it
with you!
Regardless of the grade your child is
in, research shows that the number
one way for your child to become a
better reader is for them to be
reading books at their level. The
following website is where you can
type in any book title and it will tell
you the book’s reading level.
www.arbookfind.com
Students should read an
equal amount of fiction
and non-fiction books.
Some boys need a little
convincing to get into
books. If this sounds like
your child, check out the
next website. It has a list
of books read by boys,
recommended by boys
organized by topic.
www.guysread.com
Wouldn’t it be great
if there was a quality
app that would help
my child grow as a
reader?
But wait, there is!
Recommended by our Reading Specialist, this app goes hand in hand with a reading support
program we use here with some of our struggling readers and they have great success!
Next Reading Tutor Training
Wednesday, October
3:30-4:30
Greywolf Library
th
26
Next Family Involvement Night
Tuesday, November 8th
6:30, Greywolf Gym
Getting the most out of
your parent/teacher
conference!