Multisensory Approach

A Multisensory approach to learning uses more than one sense at a time. There is an integration of auditory, visual, tactile (touch) and kinesthetic (movement) learning elements within a given lesson or activity. Here are some examples of what each sense might look like;

Visual-the use of posters, picture clues, video, visual maps, diagrams

Auditory-incorporating music, singing, rhymes, audio tones, chants, clapping and dialogue, anything that involves the ear. Students may also chorally read together, read aloud, listen to the teacher or another student throughout the lesson.

Tactile-Anything that involves touching, manipulating and moving letters, touching textured objects (letters made of sandpaper, writing in salt or shaving cream), using coins, counters or small objects.

Kinesthetic- learning through motion and doing, using both fine and gross motor skills. Learning hand motions, jumping on mats, dancing, say a letter out loud while  writing the letter it in the air.

What's awesome about a multisensory approach to learning is that it is fun and works for every type of learner and can easily be done at HOME!  

Stay tuned for activities to incorporate multisensory learning with your family.

Leveled Books

It's that time of the year where teachers are reading with our children trying to find out what their individual reading levels are. There are a lot of different leveled reading programs available for teachers to use in their classrooms.  The reading program I use in my district is different from the program used in my children's school.

Let's start with what is a reading level and why it is used.

If a book is too hard for your child, they can become easily frustrated and discouraged causing your child to shut down. A book that is too easy can be boring and  not challenging enough. Think of it all like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Goldilocks is looking for things that are just right for her, things that are comfortable and familiar. Knowing your child's reading level is the key to success and the best way to grow as a reader.  Your child's reading level contains books that are just right, not too hard or not too easy, but challenging enough to learn from.

There is a wide range of reading abilities that exist within grade levels and age groups.  Reading levels are assessed using programs used in your child's school.  Here are some of the popular reading systems used in schools today;
Fountas & Pinnell
Reading Recovery
DRA
The Lexile Framework for Reading
Reading A to Z

Here is a Correlation Chart showing  Reading Assessment comparisons.

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Once your child's teacher has provided you with your child's reading level now what do you do? How can you support them at home? 

You may not have to run out and by books, below I have included a website that lists popular children's books broken down by reading level.  Check and see if you have their "Just Right" book at home or pick some titles your child might like and check out the books from your local library.

http://www.the-best-childrens-books.org/guided-reading-levels.html

Happy Reading!

Asking Questions

Parents asking the questions 

I don't ask my kids questions every time we read, some times I just want the story to flow and let my kids focus on my fluency, expression and character voices.

So when is a good time to ask kids questions about books at home and where do you start?

In my opinion try questioning one to two times a week would be great, that's if you are reading daily. When my kids were younger say around the ages of 2 and 3 my questions were mainly based on the pictures found in the stories such as; what is the animal doing, how many apples do you see, how do you think they are feeling, why do you think so and so is doing that? Or even more basic just asking your child to describe what they see in the picture. Later on build off the pictures and start asking about the story; Who are the characters? What just happened? Why did they do that? What would you have done? What do you think will happen next?

Kids asking the questions 

As your child gets the hang of answering your questions have them ask you the questions. This requires some higher level thinking- they have to first know the answer and then in return know how to ask the question. They love this because they feel like they are important and have some ownership. I tell my kids to ask me questions to see if I was paying attention to what was gong on. 

Once again start off small, have them ask you questions about pictures or even just one sentence from the story. Your kids may need lots of modeling to understand how to ask questions so take it easy. 

Trying to pick parts of a story that would be easy to ask a question about, like at the beginnning when a character is just being introduced. 

Have fun with this, if you are up for it use a pretend microphone to let the kids talk into- we have an echo mic from the dollar store that adds some flare to or story time. 

Vocabulary

I have been reading the same Berenstain Bear book, New Neighbors for five nights in a row to my two children. If you are not familiar with this story it's about the bear family getting new neighbors. The story talks about a real estate bear putting up a sold sign on the house next door. Well tonight it finally dawned on me, do my kids know what a real estate person is, or bear in this case. Well I paused my reading and asked if they knew what one was and sure enough they had no clue. So I took a moment to explain that a real estate person was someone who sells houses. I compared it to them selling lemon aid (which is something they have been dying to do). I also took the opportunity to talk about how they can figure out what the word means by thinking about how it is used in the story and looking at the picture of the real estate bear.

Why don't I do this more often? I talk about books with my kids all the time but sometimes I take it for granted that they may not know what all the words mean. We love Fancy Nancy books because the main character teaches us " fancy" words.

So tonight I am setting a goal for myself. A goal to talk more about vocabulary and a goal to encourage my kids to ask about words that they do not know. I encourage you to join me.

Happy reading!

Family Involvement Starts Here

Welcome to my page! After many discussions with family and friends about literacy tips and tricks that parents can do at home I have been encouraged to share what I do and what I know with others.
Here is a little background on where my passion began:

To be honest, immediately after attending graduate school and receiving my Masters in Literacy and becoming certified in Literacy Birth through Grade 6, I never quite wrapped my head around the whole "birth" part of my certification. After graduate school I immediately started working in a school as a reading teacher for Kindergartners through fourth grader. It wasn't until I had children of my own where I had a true understanding about the birth part of literacy. As a reading teacher the strategies, practice skills, and knowledge flowed through my brain daily for reading instruction; so I of course implemented them in my own home.  While playing, sitting in the car, at the dinner table, going for a walk or at bedtime I would implement my teachings. To be these activities seemed so basic and came naturally to me,  I never gave then a second thought. It wasn't until having discussions with friends and other parents that some of my ideas were something they would have never thought about. So here I am to share with you ideas for home to promote lifelong learners and readers.

My hope is to help you with ideas that are simple, easily implemented while using materials already on hand while avoiding any educational jargon that can be found else where out there in cyber world.