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Welcome Parents and Guardians!
YOU play a critical role in building your child’s literacy skills! Below are some suggestions and activities that you can do at home to support your child’s learning. As always please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns that you may have.
Building Reading Skills:
Please encourage your son/daughter to read for at least 30 minutes each day. Reading materials can include books (in print or on audio), magazines, newspapers, online articles, manuals, graphic novels, etc. The text should be something that your student will enjoy.
Encourage your child to keep an active reading log or flag their thoughts with sticky notes while reading. Students can:
- Jot down things they notice about a book/chapter/section of a text before they begin reading
- Make predictions about what will happen next
- Ask questions
- Make personal connections to the text
- Read between the lines and note something the author might be hinting at
- Summarize the key ideas
- Write down their reaction to the events in a text
Also, no matter what age your student is the importance of reading aloud to them cannot be understated. Consider reading a book together! Plenty of read aloud opportunities are also available online.
Rule of Five: When selecting a text for your son/daughter to read independently have him/her read the first page. As they read they should put down a finger for every word they do not know. If they reach 5 fingers, the book is too challenging.
Need help getting started?
- Click HERE and HERE for lists of popular Young Adult novels
- Click HERE and HERE for lists of popular Young Adult nonfiction
- READ ALOUD RESOURCES: Check out First Chapter Fireside Chats to see Senior High School Factulty and staff reading the first chapter of their favorite books. You can also access the First Chapter Friday Archive. This has the recording of many exciting first chapters of Young Adult texts that are meant to appeal to a variety of student interests. If a book from either resource strikes your student's interest, the book can be requested through the library.
- Access countless ebooks and audio books for FREE through Overdrive. Just have your child log in using their school credentials. Downloading the Sora app allows students to access Overdrive on their phones.
Other Ideas:
- Read a novel together as a family.
- Listen to audio books in the car.
- Create a comfortable space in your home dedicated to reading. Let your student help you design this space.
- Check out your local library for book club opportunities, author visits, and more. Don't forget to ask the librarians for personal recommendations!
- Have your child read children’s books to younger siblings, cousins, friends, etc.
- Follow Young Adult authors on social media sites (they often do read alouds of their books)
Building Vocabulary:
Vocabulary is critical to building your child’s reading, writing, and speaking skills. Once again, reading each day is the best way to build vocabulary.
Check out the following SAT word lists and flash cards:
Other Ideas:
- Post a “Word of the Week” on the refrigerator. Encourage your entire family to use this word as often as possible during the week in both speech and writing. You can even make this a competition by tallying points for correct usage.
- Have a family game night where you play word games such as, Scrabble, Bananagrams, and UpWords.
- Ask your child to mark new words they find while reading. Discuss them afterwards.
- There are plenty of vocabulary games available online. There are also many vocabulary apps for your phone or tablet. Check some out together.
Building Writing Skills:
Writing and reading go hand in hand. Encourage your child to read a variety of text genres (poetry, plays, novels, nonfiction, comic books, etc.) to familiarize them with different styles of writing.
Other Ideas:
- Encourage your child to keep a journal or diary.
- Start a family blog
- Access storybird.com to write your own stories inspired by artwork
- Learning to type may help your student write more easily. Check out this free touch typing program.
