O'Connor, Kim: 1st Grade
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Dear Class O’Connor Families,
I’m writing to tell you a bit about how important reading aloud is for children and some things you can do while reading aloud.
Children learn a huge amount from being read to. They learn literary and academic vocabulary. From stories, they learn about how characters face trouble. From nonfiction, they learn about the world. What’s most important is, because they love you and love being with you, they learn to love reading. Reading aloud is one of the most important things we can do with children.
Read aloud can be with any book for any reason - picture books, nonfiction books, magazines, comic books, graphic novels. You can share familiar stories together, introduce unfamiliar tricky books to your child or even take turns reading a book aloud and talking about it. Children love to be read aloud to and this is a time to help your child learn to fall in love with reading by being a reading partner.
Here are some things you can do while reading aloud to your child:
- You can read any kind of book or magazine.
- You can be silly, or serious. Kids love it when adults step into the role of characters and sound like those characters. You can even act out parts!
- You can choose to read about topics you’d love to start conversations about with your child.
Here are some problems that might arise, and how you can work through them:
- If your child gets up and moves around, don’t worry. Kids do that. Keep reading.
- If you are unsure of your language skills, don’t worry. You don’t have to be a perfect reader. Your voice, which your child loves, will be the most important gift to your child.
- If your family speaks languages other than English, know that it’s great (more than great, it’s important) to read to your children in any language.
We have plenty of books and magazines at school if you’d like to borrow any. The local library has even more. Please let me know if you want some help finding or choosing books to read aloud.
All the best,
Mrs. O’Connor