Dear Parents,

Did you know that you are your child’s first and most important teacher?  Your child’s ability to learn to read and write reflects your interest.  Encourage your child to read and become an active participant in this exciting event.  An important way you can help is by reading aloud to your child on a daily basis.

The Benefits of Family Storybook Reading Experiences

Builds information about the world outside the family and everyday life.

Develops a sense of how stories are constructed.

Provides meanings of words that may not be part of everyday speech.

Provides opportunities to hear a variety of language patterns.

Engages in language play centered on sounds of language.

Fosters the ability to listen carefully.

Allows practice in oral turn taking.

Provides awareness that in book reading, conversation is controlled by what is being read.

Teaches that language is symbolic – words and pictures are representations of things.

Teaches social behavior that accompanies school reading instruction.

Allows observation and practice with comprehension strategies of expert readers.

Tips When Reading Aloud to Children

Begin reading to children when they are young.

Let your child help you choose the books to read.

Stimulate language and listening by singing and reciting nursery rhymes, songs, poems and tongue twisters.

Set aside a time each day for reading aloud.

Read a variety of books that differ in subject and length.

When reading make sure the pictures and words can be easily seen.

Use plenty of expression.

Take books with when you go out, for those times when you need to wait.

Limit TV viewing.

Set a good example by showing your child that you enjoy reading books, magazines and newspapers.

Encourage dialogue about the story you are reading since this promotes curiosity.

Enjoy listening to your child “pretend read” favorite books, and tell stories.

Talk about the pictures, rhyming patterns, and letters in the story.

Encourage your child to join in with repetitions, rhymes and predictable patterns as you read favorite stories.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Sanfilippo

Dear Parents,

An important component of the kindergarten reading program consists of multiple readings of stories with repetitive words and phrases.  We do this through the use of both big and small books.  This approach engages all of the children in the literature experience, allowing each to gain readiness skills at their own developmental level.  This memorization of a story is the first step to reading, giving the children confidence as they “read” the story independently.

Each time that a particular story is read, we emphasize a different skill: phonics, sight words, left-to-right and top-to-bottom progression, rhyming, voice-print matching and punctuation.   These are important readiness skills in preparing your child for reading.

Your child will bring home copies of many of these repetitive books.  You can help to reinforce the readiness skills by reading the books several times with your child, pointing to the text as you read, stressing sight words, rhyming patterns, letter sounds, etc.  To further reinforce the skills you and your child could write your own version of the story by changing language or characters.

Please remember that the single most important thing you can do at home to help your child be successful in school is to read to them every day.  Constant exposure to books, words, letters, rhyming patterns, and sound blending increases a child’ s ability to hear, understand and recognize differences in letters, and words.  These skills are the necessary building blocks of a successful reading program.

Please call if you have any questions or concerns.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Sanfilippo