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MirandaHobbes
member
Question about reading
MirandaHobbes
member
A question awhile back about which books your kids enjoy got me thinking.. I've been going with the assumption that the "Easy Reader" type books are the best for DS right now (almost 5 years old, pdd-nos), because they will help him learn to read. He especially likes the Step 1 series, any topic. But the verbiage is pretty plain and simple, obviously. Are pictures books, with more complex language use, a better option at this age? Last night I started reading him his first chapter book- The Magic Tree House series, with no pictures. I was surprised that he happily sat through two chapters, but I was interrupted with many questions because clearly he was having a hard time conceptualizing things without pictures to focus on. (Wizards, horse-serpant type creatures, etc, all kinda flew over his head, although he was trying to follow)
When I google "chapter books for 5 year olds" I come up with a lot of chapter books I didn't read until 3rd or 4th grade- Ramona, Little House, Roald Dahl, Stuart Little, etc. Are kids reading these types of books earlier now? In all DS' preschool classes they are still using picture books.
Should I just do a mix of all kinds of books, or is one or the other better to focus on? DS loves to read and is just now starting to try to "guess" words and he sometimes likes to follow along the words when I read.
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Re: Question about reading
I'll try to respond more tomorrow when I can get on a computer and not type oe handed on a ipad...but in short, kids learning to read need exposure to a variety of "levels." Chapter books are great to read aloud to him to help develop comprehension skills that do not rely on picture support. Higher level picture books are also great read alouds to build comprehension. The key is to find ones that have content that is age appropriate yet uses more complex language, sentence structure, etc. He also needs those easy readers to learn the process of reading. Like I said, I'll try to post more tomorrow.
DS has been working hard on learning to read on his own. We pull out Pete the Cat and Hop on Pop when he wants to practice.
ETA: I don't like Junie B. Jones. Her grammar is atrocious, even for the age she is supposed to be, and while they are funny for adults, the jokes go way over DS's head. She does some crazy things that I don't want DS copying, and often I felt like I needed to read a bunch more of the book than I would usually do so that he didn't either get the wrong idea or be frightened by the problems she was facing and be left to ruminate over, say, how horrible the school bus is.
I'll let you in on a little secret...learning to read is so individualized that the best we can do is offer a variety of strategies so that the child can help string the concepts together in whatever way makes sense in their minds. Most kids will pick up on reading through common strategies, but...well, we all know that our kids aren't "most" kids.
Ok, so you want to think about reading in three ways. Reading TO your child, reading WITH your child and reading BY your child.
When reading TO your child, this is when you select books that are above your child's independent and instructional reading levels. These books will have more complex sentence structures, more advanced vocabulary, (in fiction) more advanced and complicated story lines, etc. The actual "reading level" is going to be high, but the interest level is lower. For example, Stellaluna is a favorite story for kids in Kindergarten. It is at a 4th-ish grade reading level, but at a K-2 interest level. Meaning, the words and structure are higher, but the concepts can be accessed by younger students. These are the books that build comprehension and language skills.
Magic Tree House is an interesting series in that the reading level is lower than the interest level. Most of these books are given an interest level around 3rd/4th grade, but reading level is around a mid 2nd grade. As you noted with your child, some of the concepts are challenging (but the vocabulary and structure is not too complex).
When reading WITH your child, these are books that are going to be lower in reading level where your child is going to need help to read the story but not hit a level of frustration (typically 88-93% accurracy and good comprehension). This is getting technical and not something I suggest you do as a parent, but to figure out your child's accurracy rate, you count the number of correctly read words (without any help) and divide by the number of total words in the text. Fluency will play a role in this as well. It is also important to evaluate comprehension at the same time. Like I said, this is a rough description of how reading levels are assessed in school...I would not suggest getting this technical at home. You can tell if the book is too hard!
At any level, you can work on decoding strategies (picture clues, phonics, sight words, chunks, sentence content, etc) as well as comprehension strategies (retelling, characters, problem, solution, main idea, etc.) I wouldn't have a mini-lesson with each book, but talk about what is happening, what they think will happen, etc.
Oops, forgot one. Reading BY your child is listening to them read. These books are going to be MUCH simpler. These are the easy readers you find at the library/bookstore. The storylines tend to be basic since the author is gearing it towards a child who is learning to read.
You want to mix in fiction and nonfiction since our brains read them differently. So, experiment and
I hope this makes sense. I was interrupted a million times while writing this (between LA, Adelyn and DH...not to mention post pregnancy brain) so forgive spelling and rambling!!
One sight that is useful for finding reading levels and interest levels is the book wizard at Scholastic https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/