The Reading Connection opens 14th Read-Aloud program site in Silver Spring

Our newest Read-Aloud site opened on Thursday, March 10, 2016. Our program partner is the YMCA's Youth & Family Services, located at the community center at the Northwest Park Apartments in Silver Spring. The children who attend the Read-Aloud attend the JoAnn Leleck Elementary School at Broad Acres, where 95 percent of the children are eligible for free and reduced price meals.  

Eleven enthusiastic kids, ranging in age from 4 to 11, came to the first Read-Aloud. They had a great time listening to books about bears (the theme), which volunteers read to groups of kids.   

Next came a theme-related activity, which was making a small bear out of a toilet-paper tube, with the addition of construction paper eyes, ears and paws. 

Finally, volunteers helped each child choose a new book, provided by TRC, to take home.  

The Read-Aloud program is designed to bring together volunteer readers and at-risk children, with the aim of providing the children positive experiences with reading and free, new books to keep. Thank you to our great new volunteers, the staff at the Y and kudos to Stephanie Berman, TRC director of program operations, for handling all the details of the new site opening!  Happy reading! 

Summer Read-Aloud outlines

It's summertime! The temperatures are heating up and kids are antsy for summer vacation to arrive. Kids think about freedom from the classroom and time to spend outdoors and with friends. Adults think of ways to entertain their kids and how to prevent them from losing everything they learned during the school year.

We think about that a lot at The Reading Connection too. Studies have shown that kids can lose two to three months of math and reading skills and at-risk kids, like the ones who come to Read-Alouds, can lose even more. These studies have shown that two of the biggest factors in preventing summer learning loss are enriching experiences and time spent reading. Read-Alouds present an opportunity to achieve both.

Our volunteer seminar on June 3 presented ways to teach kids new concepts and vocabulary in the context of a Read-Aloud. We showed ways to bring real-world experiences into your Read-Alouds by making your activity a hands-on experience. We'll be sharing these ideas with you over the next couple of blog posts and throughout the summer.

 At the seminar, we presented six Read-Alouds that focus on typical summer experiences that kids at Read-Aloud sites might not get to have because of their current economic or living situations. But, have no fear, the kids will still get to experience camping and air travel. You'll be the ones bringing it to them through at Read-Aloud! 


Click on the following Read-Aloud titles for an outline with books, activities and conversation starters.

Camping Read-Aloud - Set up a tent and read inside. Make a pretend campfire, read by flashlight and then tell ghost stories or sing camp songs. Make s'mores in the microwave.

Air travel Read-Aloud - Make the whole Read-Aloud an air travel adventure. Set carpet squares or chairs in rows like airplane seats. Give kids boarding passes, check them in and make them clear security before reading.

Museum Read-Aloud - Create your own museum of the kid's art and let the kids be the museum docent. Imagine you come from the future and think about how you'd interpret everyday items.

Rainy day Read-Aloud - If it's too wet to play outside, how can we entertain ourselves indoors? Think about forts and old fashioned games like pick-up-sticks, while reading The Cat in the Hat and Jumanji.

Beach Read-Aloud - Lay out beach towels instead of carpet squares and engage all the senses with items you might find at the beach.

Extreme weather Read-Aloud - We've already experienced tornadoes and hurricanes this summer. Read about how they're formed and what kind of damage they can do then make your own tornado with water bottles or a hurricane out of cotton balls.

We encourage you to use these Read-Alouds with the kids at your site. With the planning mostly done, your team can focus on implementation, and the kids will love the hands-on activities and will hopefully learn something new in the process. We'll be posting more Read-Aloud outlines later in the summer for you to use, so stay tuned.

To receive credit for this online training, please fill out the form here.

Expanding vocabulary

The achievement gap between at-risk youth and advantaged youth usually begins even before children arrive at school. It often starts with a child's vocabulary. We are only able to comprehend and discuss concepts and issues for which we know the associated vocabulary. So, it is essential for kids to learn lots of new words all the time.

One of the best ways to learn new vocabulary is through reading. Picture books contain a lexicon at a much higher level than what a child can read on his or her own. For example, the picture book In the Small, Small Pond by Denise Fleming contains the text "waddle, wade geese parade" and "minnows scatter." A seven-year-old might not know exactly what minnows are or what waddle means, but she will be able to decipher their meanings from the images and the context. However, this deduction probably won't happen unless a discussion about the words is prompted by an adult.

Children usually skip over unknown words when reading, so when helping kids learn new vocabulary, take just a moment to point out a new word and then return to the flow of the story. Provide a short, kid-friendly definition and show how it relates to the picture (if possible). A short definition ensures the children understand the text and will hold their interest. Focus on words that are common in adult speech so the kids hear the words again. Hearing a new word one time won't make it stick, but repetition will. Encourage the children to name similar words or connect the new word to what they already know. For example, after reading about geese waddling in In the Small, Small Pond, ask the children what other animals waddle.

Show the kids how to use the pictures to their advantage while reading. This will go a long way in helping them when they have to read in later grades. Explain that looking at pictures is not cheating, but it's what they're there for.

For more strategies about improving kids' vocabulary while reading, check out Reading Rockets.


To receive credit for this online training, please fill out the form here.

Get in on the ground floor: early literacy development at your Read-Aloud

Reading research demonstrates that literacy learning starts at birth. Crucial components of reading skills are built long before a child starts school, mostly by adults talking with young children, reading to them and providing them with lots of experiences.

Fortunately, very young children are champs at absorbing these important concepts and skills they’ll need later on. They just need a grown-up to show them. If I child doesn’t learn these concepts and skills before school starts, he’s going to be playing catch-up for a while. And even as kids are catching their stride as independent readers, practicing these early literacy skills strengthens their abilities. 

Here are the cornerstones of early literacy development and some ways to incorporate them into your Read-Aloud or a reading experience with a child in your life. 

Comprehension

Understanding what you read requires a large vocabulary, lots of experiences in the world and the abilities to both predict what will happen next and to connect what you are reading with your life experiences. 

 
Every new word a child learns and every experience a child has are money in the bank that he can draw on to help him understand as he reads or listens to a new text. The bigger the vocabulary and the more life experiences, the bigger the “account” from which to draw. 

To develop comprehension skills at your Read-Aloud, choose books with unusual words and take the time to talk with the kids about what those words mean. Choose books with a repetitive or predictable structure and pause while you are reading to let the kids practice predicting what will happen next. Some books, such as Who Hops? by Katie Davis, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? by Bill Martin Jr. and many books by Jan Brett include hints and questions to help kids guess what will come next. Encourage the kids to make connections between the book and their own experiences. Model these skills by saying things like “I wonder what that word means.” or “Gee—what will happen next. Maybe…” or “Oh, this reminds me of the time when I …”

Phonological Awareness

Phonological awareness means being aware that letters have sounds associated with them and words are a combination of those sounds. Children’s books are the perfect tools for helping kids become aware of letter and word sounds because so many of them have great rhyme, alliteration and rhythm. 

Rhyme and alliteration help kids learn about the sounds that letters make. Rhythm helps kids recognize words, syllables and the sounds they make. Nursery rhymes are also a great way to teach these skills since they include rhyme and often incorporate hand motions that illustrate the text.

"Experts in literacy and child development have discovered that if children know eight nursery rhymes by heart by the time they are four years old, they’re usually among the best readers by the time they are eight."  -- Mem Fox, Reading Magic.

Why? Because nursery rhymes have great rhyme, rhythm and alliteration.

To build phonological awareness at your Read-Aloud, choose books with rhyme, rhythm and alliteration (words all starting with the same sound.) Encourage the kids to finish rhymes when you pause, clap out rhythms and name other words that rhyme or start with the same sound.  Try pairing a book with an associated nursery rhyme. Teach younger kids the words and help them sing along.

Alphabetic Principle

Letters are just symbols. They are shapes that have sounds associated with them. Developing this concept requires helping kids recognize letters, name them and learn the sounds that are associated with them.

Read ABC books and books with alliteration with the kids. Encourage the kids to point out letters they recognize and to make the different sounds letters make. A recent story on NPR tells of a study that found that asking kids to identify letters on a page in a story helped their reading skills even several years later.

Concepts about print

Simply put, it’s understanding how books work. Any book will do. 

Help the child identify parts of the book (cover, spine, title page, author and illustrator), orient the books for reading (right side up), understand the direction of text (in English, we read left to right) and distinguish words from pictures. 

Reading research has identified the four concepts above as the cornerstones of early literacy development.  I’d add one more:  delight in books and reading.  Developing positive feelings about books and reading are also essential to becoming a life-long reader. So be sure to keep your Read-Alouds fun. You’ll be helping create readers from the bottom up!


To receive credit for this online training, please fill out the form here.

Use it or lose it! Tackling summer reading loss

Summer is officially here. We've had our Memorial Day cookouts and the temperature and humidity are ramping up. Kids are getting excited about school getting out and educators across the country are worried about how much kids' abilities will deteriorate over the summer.

Summer reading loss is a real and cumulative problem.   

Available research indicates that the reading achievement of poor children, as a group, typically declines during the summer vacation period, while the reading achievement of children from more economically advantaged families holds steady or increases modestly.            

(Richard Allington and Anne McGill-Franzen, Phi Delta Kappan, September, 2003.)

Moreover, researchers have found that these losses are cumulative over time. So if two kids are at the same reading level at the beginning of second grade, by the time they reach the end of sixth grade, the poor child can be nearly three years behind. Studies show that there is little or no difference between the children’s achievement while school is in session. It is what happens over the summer that sets poor kids back.  

This video from Education Nation demonstrates the contrast between the summer experiences of underprivileged children versus those of their more affluent peers:

What factors cause this phenomenon? Poor kids face a triple threat over the summer in relation to their more affluent peers. They experience the following: 

Lack of access to books.
Poor kids have fewer books in their homes and less access to public libraries than middle-- and upper -- income kids. If you don't have any books, you can't practice your reading skills.

Lack of encouragement and motivation to read during the summer.
Poor kids are less likely to be involved in programs sponsored by libraries, book stores and communities that encourage and reward reading for fun over the summer. If reading isn't fun, kids are less likely to do it on their own.



Lack of resources and opportunities to build background knowledge. 
Poor kids' families have fewer resources to send their kids to summer camps or enrichment programs or to take family outings and trips than more affluent kids. 
  

Why do real-world experiences matter?

Real-world experiences build both vocabulary and background knowledge. These two factors influence reading comprehension. The more background knowledge a child has, the better he will understand what he's read, even if his vocabulary is inadequate.

Summer reading programs have been trying to address the first two problems for years, with varying success. Some schools send books home with kids over the summer to provide book access. Libraries and bookstores conduct summer reading programs and challenges to motivate kids to read.

TRC's We Are Readers summer reading initiative works to address all three. 

Access to books:  We continue our Read-Aloud program during the summer with all of our partner agencies, including the weekly opportunity for kids to choose books to keep. We also continue our Book Club program, which provides children's books to families through the mail.

Motivation:  At our participating We Are Readers sites, we create a bulletin board system to track how much kids read for fun, and each site sets aside time every day for the kids to read whatever they want to (or be read to).  This year our theme is the Olympics, so kids will be adding flames to a torch for every ten minutes they read for fun. We also provide prizes for site staff to give kids when they catch kids reading for fun. Seeing the torch get bigger and accumulating prizes motivates the kids to read, read, read.

Real-world experiences:  TRC makes real-world experiences central to the We Are Readers program. We make the participating sites' summer events calendars and children's programming plans available to our volunteers so that they can plan Read-Alouds that correlate to the kids' experiences. For example, if a site takes the kids to Great Falls, TRC volunteers might do a Read-Aloud about hiking and camping. TRC also brings in special guests and creates opportunities for the kids to have new experiences, such as preparing the kinds of foods a visiting zookeeper feeds the pandas at the National Zoo.

What can you do to make this summer one with learning gains instead of losses?

Participate in a local reading program through your public library, bookstore or The Reading Connection. In one week in May, 123 kids read for 15,000 minutes in the Arlington Kids Read Read-A-Thon. Keep the momentum going by joining TRC's We Are Readers summer initiative through the Arlington Kids Read website. We'll post our Olympics theme tracking materials as well as outlines from some of our favorite summer time Read-Alouds for you to use with young readers starting at the end of June.

Make sure the kids in your life have lots of books available to them. Visit the library, swap books with friends and search your shelves for old favorites that have been buried behind more recent titles. Include newspapers and magazines in what you offer kids during the summer. Check out Reading Rockets' summer reading list for ideas.

Use great resources like James Patterson's ReadKiddoRead website. He provides easy steps to make reading the thing to do this summer as well as a great list of books. Reading Rockets also has a handy guide to make sure your kids have fun reading this summer.  Finally, Reading Rockets has created a new summer reading program called Start With a Book.

Finally, try something new with your kids this summer. Teach them to garden, cook or fix a bike. Explore your neighborhood or visit a museum. Listen to a new kind of music together. Gather family stories from your elders. Every new experience builds vocabulary and background knowledge, improving comprehension. And the more you understand what you are reading, the more fun it is to read!


To receive credit for this online training, please fill out the form here.

Dialogic Reading

How can a Read-Aloud be more than a Read-Aloud?

When it is a conversation. Reading books aloud to kids accomplishes several goals. It provides pleasure, builds vocabulary, and exposes children to plot structure, characters and the world around them. But can it do more? Why, yes!

If, instead of reading a book straight through to a group of silent children, you have a conversation with the kids about the book as you are reading it, you can accomplish so much more.

Here's an example. Interrupting Chicken by David Ezra Stein is a powerhouse of a picture book: great illustrations, accurate portrayal of a bedtime scenario, wry humor and the perfect example of how NOT to read to a child. In the story, the little red chicken is driving her papa crazy. She interrupts him every time he tries to read her a fairy tale. And every time the little red chicken interrupts, her papa stops reading and scolds her, telling her to “try not to get so involved.”  

But involved is exactly what we want from a child listening to a story. By interrupting with her own ideas, the little red chicken is exercising her imagination, analyzing the story, predicting what happens next and making connections to her life and experiences. Having a conversation with children about a book while you are reading it to them helps them develop these crucial skills for successful reading.

Many of the children we serve experience a "conversation gap." This means they don't have as many opportunities to have in-depth conversations with adults as more affluent children and they've spent less time learning to interact and analyze on a deeper level. Discussing books with the kids as you read them provides much needed practice at these important social and thinking skills and can build reading comprehension abilities.

The fancy name for these conversations is dialogic reading. It basically means having a conversation with a child about the book you are reading together, while you are reading it. It means asking questions about the story or illustrations and then exploring the child’s answer and the story together.

What kind of questions, you ask?

• Fill in the blank: In rhyming and repetitive books, pause at the end of a phrase and ask the child to finish it.
• Prediction: What does the child think will happen next?
• Who, What, When, Where, Why and How: The first four allow the child to identify elements of the story. Why and how are open-ended questions allowing her to provide her own insights and analyze the situation.
• Connection: Can the child connect this to another book or a life experience?

Reading a story to a child this way is more fun for the child and more fun for the reader. By asking questions--and listening and responding to answers--you actively involve the child in the story, and you gain insights into her thoughts and imagination while building her reading comprehension and motivation.

Reading Rockets has a great article covering in more detail the what, why and how of dialogic reading. And here's a video showing how it's done.

So the next time you read aloud to a group of TRC kids, plan on lots of interruptions, conversation and fun.


To receive credit for this online training, please fill out the form here.

Say it again: the benefits of repetition

Anyone who has worked with young children has probably experienced firsthand the ability of kids to do the same thing over and over...and over...and over again. For hours. But while this may be frustrating for older minds that like to finish one thing and move on to the next, remind yourself that repetition is a valuable teaching tool for young kids. By repeating phrases or stories over and over again, kids learn about patterns and prediction, both of which are valuable skills when learning to read.

Rhyme and repetition, which stick naturally in a reader's brain, do something incredible: they empower the reader. For a child learning to read and to appreciate books, being able to guess what comes next is a wonderful feeling.

A classic example of this is the story of Chicken Little, who thought the sky was falling and ran around telling everyone he met. The phrase, "the sky is falling!" is repeated throughout the story--giving readers a chance to shout it out and a reason to build up the level of excitement over the course of the book! This story also gives a great example of how rhyming can function to make a story sillier and more entertaining: traditionally, the characters Chicken Little meets in the story have names like Henny Penny, Goosey Loosey, Ducky Lucky and Foxy Woxy. 

Many folktales share these characteristics along with their repetitive structures. Some other great examples of folktales with repetitive structures and refrains are The Little Red Hen, Goldilocks and the Three Bears and The Three Little Pigs.


Another great use of structural repetition can be found in cumulative tales. These stories follow the structure of There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. On each consecutive page, another element is added to the story and the whole group is reviewed in the order they were added. Then, at the climax, one last addition joins the group which tips the balance and it all unravels. Luckily for the young reader, the group comes apart in the same order it got put together, so she'll know what's coming next, which is a great feeling.

Another great story with repeated phrases is The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Think:

"And he was..."
"STILL HUNGRY!"
"Still hungry! How did he get so hungry?"


You can use repetition in activities, as well--one fun game is, "I'm going on a picnic and I'm bringing..." where you go around in a circle and each child has to remember all the things that were added to the picnic basket and then add something of his or her own. This game can be played with food, but there are endless variations, and you can split the kids in to groups so that the circle doesn't get too big, making it a little easier for younger children. 


Rhyme often occurs side-by-side with repetition--and both are great tools for developing memory skills--but rhyming poetry or songs are just as fun on their own.  Prepare for a Read-Aloud that focuses on repetition or rhyme with a round of "Boom Chicka Boom":


I said a boom chicka boom (echo)
I said a boom chicka boom (echo)
I said a boom chicka rocka chicka rocka chicka boom (echo)
Uh huh (echo)
Oh yeah (echo)
One more time (echo)
___________ style (echo) 


Fill in the blank with the style the next round will be in: whispering, opera, with British accents--anything you want.  And you never know, by the end, the kids could be begging to do it all over again.

Post by The Reading Connection intern Anna McCormally.


To receive credit for this online training, please fill out the form here.

Parts of a Book: The Importance of Book Mechanics

While Read-Alouds are about getting kids excited for the stories inside books and giving them information on all their favorite subjects, there's another part that we talk about less frequently: helping kids learn about books in general.

Children who grow up in families where books aren't an integral part of daily life may not be as familiar with the parts of a book as kids who use books every day. Helping kids at Read-Alouds get comfortable with the way books are organized is just as important as inspiring them to read on their own or teaching them how to sound out words. It's part of the mechanics of reading. 

In Read-Alouds, take time to emphasize the parts of a book.

How to hold a book
If you're not too familiar with books, you might not know how to hold one--it's important to be gentle and not pull too hard on the pages or bend the spine. This you can show by example, and when kids are picking out books to take home, gently correct a child who is being too rough with it. Hold the book, smooth the cover, and say, "This looks like a great book! What a beautiful cover. Remember to treat it nicely." Observers will learn from your example.

The cover and title page
When you first bring out a story, take a minute to show the cover to the audience. Ask what they can guess about the story from the front of the book. Who will the characters be? What does the title tell us? Point out where the author's name is and read it out loud. Despite the old saying about not judging a book by its cover, learning to discern what a book is about from its cover is an important skill.

What can we take from the cover of Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories? Well, we know it's by Dr. Seuss. Ask your audience what they know from experience about Dr. Seuss books. (There will probably be silly words and rhymes.) Point out the picture of the turtles all stacked up--take a minute to talk about what that is all about!

Turn to the title page--note how the title and author's names are printed again. This is true of every book!

Table of contents and chapter list

When you have a reader who is just moving up to longer books--or if you're going to read part of one to a group--take a minute to show off the table of contents or the chapter list. Some nonfiction books will have a table of contents that shows where different sections begin and end. Show the kids how to find which part you want to read, and the corresponding page number. 

Explain how not every book has to be read from the first page to the last page--the table of contents lets you skip around to what you want to read. If it's a nonfiction book and you're working one-on-one with a child, let him look through the table of contents and pick which section he wants you to read. 

Index

The first page of Shel Silverstein's Everything On It index.

Like the table of contents, knowing how to use an index is an important reading skill. Fast-forward a few years and the kids you're reading to will be asked to do a research project in school. The point of using an index is to give the kids practice finding relevant information inside books. You can give your readers a head start by helping them understand the concept of an index. It sounds like such a little thing, but the difference between knowing what an index is and how it's used and not knowing will make a big difference!

Note to your readers that the index is located at the end of the book, whereas the table of contents is at the front, and that the index works alphabetically (talk for a minute about what that means) while the table of contents lists things in the order they appear in the book.

Understanding how a book works is just as important as knowing how to read one. Don't devote an entire Read-Aloud to talking about how indexes work or what information is available on the title page--that's what school is for, and Read-Alouds are primarily about having fun with reading. But, you can integrate this kind of important information about book mechanics into every Read-Aloud you do. Even though it may not seem like it, doing so can help give readers a big advantage when it's time to use books in the rest of their lives. 

Post by The Reading Connection intern Anna McCormally.


To receive credit for this online training, please fill out the form here.