Newsletter – 26 February 2021

A few newsletters ago, I stressed the importance of ensuring that your child engages in home reading at least five times per week. At RGLPS, students are encouraged to leave ‘tracks in their thinking’ as they read. This helps students gain greater awareness of their thinking during reading and to understand that we must think and actively engage with a text to gain the most from it. This might involve making predictions; making connections to your own experience or other readings/viewings; posing questions; summarising; or inferring about characters, plot, setting or themes. In class, students are encouraged to record the ‘tracks in their thinking’ in their reading workbooks, to use post it notes or a template and to engage in discussion in order to explore their thinking in greater detail.

At RGLPS, we aim to work in partnership with parents and families to help each child with their learning. A valuable way that parents can help children with their reading is to engage in rich conversation about a text before, during and after reading. Here are some suggestions on ways to deepen the conversation you have with your child during reading.

Before Reading

•   – Discuss/ask your child to make predictions from the title, front cover, blurb, knowledge of author or genre etc. Eg – Look at the front cover and the title. What do you think this book might be about?
•   – Help your child recall any previous knowledge or experience they have of the topic. Remember when we saw the orang-utans at the Zoo. What do we know about orang-utans already?
•   – Help your child read with a question in mind. I can see that this book is about elephants. What new things do we want to know about elephants? Let’s see if we can find out about what they eat and more about their habitats?

During Reading

While reading with your child, don’t be afraid to stop periodically and reflect or engage in a conversation about the text. Examples of conversation starters include:

•   – What do you think might happen next? (prediction)
•   – What does that remind you of? (connection)
•   – What are you wondering? (questioning)
•   – How do you think the character is feeling now? How do you know this? (inferring)
•   – What is the character like? (inferring)
•  

After Reading

Take a few moments after your finish a book or chapter to reflect on the reading. You might discuss…

•   – What was the main idea or message in the book? (inferring)
•   – What are the main things you learned from this reading? (summarising, main idea)
•   – What would you still like to know about this topic? (questioning)
•   – Did you like this book? Why/why not? (personal opinion)
•  

Many children need to be shown how to tap into their thinking while reading and mistakenly think reading is just about saying the words on the page. We have to teach children that the purpose of reading is of understanding and one of the best ways we can support a deeper understanding is through rich conversation about text that explores our thinking. I encourage you to make time to discuss your child’s reading with them to  help them improve their reading comprehension.

A reminder that teachers outline the reading strategy focus for each term in Term Newsletters which are available on Compass (see School Documentation -> Year Level Newsletters) . We also encourage parents/carers to speak to the classroom teacher if you would like more specific information on your child’s learning needs and goals.

Happy reading and talking about your reading!