Thursday, July 19, 2012

Chapter 2: The Joy of Reading

Hi there! I'm Jennifer from Rowdy in First Grade and I'm so excited to be here as one of the hosts for Chapter 2: The Joy of Reading.

I confess- I was thrilled to host this chapter because I'm an avid reader! I'm a lifelong reader and the summers fly by because I spend so much time with my nose in a book.

What do I do to encourage a joy of reading?
I talk about the books I love to my students! When I grab a picture book from my stash I may say that I love the descriptions in the story, or that I love the illustrations or that I think the story is very clever. I've told my students about my favorite authors and sometimes I'll check out all the books by that author at the library so that they can see and read for themselves. When we talk about what we did over the weekend there are many times that I gush about being able to get a new book and begin reading. I try to make my love of reading infectious!

Great resource for parents
In pages 56-60 Mariah Bruehl has written about the stages of reading. This is a great resource for any parent and I immediately thought I should share it with my sister. I also thought it would be great to share with some of my parents during the school year.

Choosing the Right Books
Mrs. Bruehl discusses how to find age appropriate books for your young children. She suggests books with repetitive texts such as Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?  by Bill Martin Jr.


Make your own books!* Prior to teaching I was a nanny for three and a half years. When I first started nannying the little girl was only a year old. As she got older whenever we went somewhere fun, for example, the zoo we would take lots of pictures. I would place them into an inexpensive plastic photo book from the Target or the dollar store. Then I would type out sentences or words and add them to the pictures. "I saw a lion." "I saw a black bear." Finally I would add an easy title to the front cover "Ashley at the Zoo" We created a large collection and as she got older she would pull out our adventure books and was able to read them aloud and began to recognize high fluency words too! She also began telling ME what words to put into the book.

What are some of your favorite books with repetitive text? I think I would have to put Click Clack Moo, Cows that Type by Doreen Cronin to the top of my list. It has the repetitive aspect but it's also a clever story and you get to show your children how dramatic you can be as the farmer!

I'm loving everything I have read in this book so far and can't wait to read on!

Jennifer


2 comments:

  1. Click Clack, Moo is one of our favorite books as well! We are big-time readers over here. In fact, we just moved and loaded box after box of books. I didn't realize how many we had!

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