1. Northwoods Elementary Reading Toolkit for Parents
How to Help Your Child at Home

2. Strategies For Comprehension
Prediction
Make an educated guess based on what you know
Use what you have already learned
Use pictures, title, cover or information on the inside flaps or back of book.
Summarize
-- Tell the most important ideas
-- Retell the story in sequence including specific details
Clarify
Reread
Skip the difficult word, read on, and try to figure out the difficult word from the other word clues.
Sound it out
Break it into syllables or chunks
Ask questions about the story as you are reading
Visualization
Make a picture in your mind
Make Connections
Think about how the story reminds you of- something that has happened to you, in another text, or in the world around you

3. Reading Strategies What do you do when you come to a word you don’t know?
Does it Look Right?
Does it Sound Right?
Does it Make Sense?

4. Sight word practice Draw words in sand, jell-o, play-doh, etc.
Letter stamps
Create puzzles such as a word search or crosswords
write tricky words
Assemble a dictionary
Write words in rainbow colors using different crayons or markers
Cut letters from a newspaper or magazine to make each sight word
Write sentences, a letter, or a story using as many sight words as you can

5. How to motivate your child to read
Read aloud
Surround your child with many different books (ask friends, visit the library or bookstore, look for award winning books, experiment with different kinds of books but keep old favorites around as well.)
Practice sight words
Start a journal, send your child notes, write or draw pictures about a story you read, create your own books
Encourage your child to try (even if it is not right every time)
Listen to books on tape
Provide motivational rewards for reading
Show off reading skills to others

6. Genres of Literature
Choosing books from different genres helps students to become well-rounded readers!
Fairy Tales Mystery
Fiction Information/Concept
Non-Fiction Poetry
Biographies/Autobiographies Realistic Fiction
Historical Fiction Tall Tales
Fantasy Comics
Myths/Legends Science Fiction

7. Did you know?
Richard Allington, co-author of Classrooms That Work and Schools That Work, writes that children need to be reading easy-level text eighty percent of the time. Like the green slopes in skiing, engaging children in reading easy-level text gives them the best opportunities to practice and employ their comprehension and new word strategies. Green slopes give us the practice time to become stronger and more skillful. Too often children are reading in their “black slopes” and meaning does not come—but frustration often does.
According to the National Institute of Literacy, top reading performers read 144 times more than readers who perform at the lowest reading levels.
The National Reading Panel says that when children become good readers in the early grades, they are more likely to become better learners throughout their school days and beyond

8. How to choose an appropriate book for your child
In order to become a better reader, your child should be practicing reading “just right” books---a book that your child can read independently (not too hard or too easy)
Reading should be fairly fluent
Your child should be able to tell you about what he/she read
Your child should be interested in the topic
Use the five finger rule.
If your child encounters five or more words on a page that they are struggling with, the book is most likely too difficult to read independently but would be a good book to read together.
If your child encounters a page where they do not struggle with any words at all, this would be a good book to practice their fluency.

9. The more that you read,
The more things you will know.
The more that you learn,
The more places you’ll go
-Dr. Seuss