Read with Your Child
The importance of reading can make all the difference
By Diane Alpeter
The ultimate learning experience for a student occurs when parents, teachers and school officials work together. However, parents have two roles in this learning triangle: home caregiver and the first teachers.
“Children learn by doing,” said Marie McGurn, Department of Defense Dependents Schools, DODDS, professional development facilitator. “If they are not constantly exposed to reading they will not survive in our world. Everything revolves around reading. It is a critical skill.”
Parent participation is especially important during school breaks. Reading aloud with your child, from primary books to chapter books, 20 minutes a day can assist in keeping skills fresh, said McGurn.
Nearly all DODDS systems have a program for parents to get involved in reading with children.
Ansbach (Germany) Elementary School Librarian and Reading Starts with Us coordinator Sandy McCauley said reading activities can be implemented into busy lifestyles.
“Try to sit beside your child when he or she is reading,” she said. “Read to them. Read with them. Listen to them. It can be when you are cooking or driving or I used to read to mine when they were in the tub.”
Books are not the only things parents and children can read together. You can read recipes, directions, magazines and trading cards.
“I had a daughter who hated school, who hated reading and I let her read comic books,” McCauley said of her now grown, successful daughter.
There is so much to choose from when reading with your child. The six reading genres are fiction, nonfiction, poetry, folktales, concept and wordless. If your child is interested in nonfiction or factual books, he or she may need more help when reading, said McCauley. There is a lot of information that can sometimes overwhelm children. For example, a book about frogs may contain words like, amphibians or webbed feet.
Folktales can be fun for children if they are interested in tall tales or legends, said McCauley. When reading folktales with children, a life’s lesson is learned from the story. There may be real-life examples in the home that the family can talk about after the story.
Poetry can be melodic and silly for children and parents. Many of the words in poems are put together for the way they sound. Jump rope jingles, silly songs, and some commercial tunes are all forms of poetry as well as poems from books.
Fiction is usually the basic, ‘let’s cuddle under a blanket and read a good book,’ said McCauley. While reading, ask your child to make predictions or guess what comes next in the story. It doesn’t matter if the prediction is right or wrong. The only thing that matters is that he is thinking and getting involved in the story.
The learning triangle lets parents know we are all in this together, said McCauley. “We say that reading is really important in school and if parents set aside time for reading outside of school, then the student knows reading really is important.”