Active Reading: Mem Fox Shows How and Why

One of TRC's favorite authors, Mem Fox, has written over 30 children's books and five nonfiction books for adults.  Fox's Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes is a fabulous read-aloud choice. Her nonfiction book for adults, Reading Magic: Why Reading Aloud to Our Children Will Change Their Lives Forever shares TRC's read-aloud approach (do it as often as possible!) and her website is full of suggestions and how-tos for reading aloud. 

On the website, you can hear Mem read aloud from a section from her book titled "And do it like this."

"Reading aloud," Mem says, "is not quite enough -- we need to read aloud well."

Research shows that children need to hear 1,000 stories read aloud before they can learn to read themselves. Mem's philosophy is that for a child to sit still long enough to hear 1,000 stories, what they're hearing needs to be good! Just reading isn't enough; you need to read actively. 

What is active reading? For Mem, it means being aware of your expression, your body position and make eye contact with your audience. Make faces, change your tone and the speed of your reading. Hear her elaborate on active reading here.

When Mem reads, she emphasizes the music of the human voice. Change your pitch, go up and down. Whisper and shout! Speed up and slow down with the story. Make it exciting! 

Other than putting your audience to sleep, the most important thing to avoid is being patronizing. Mem cautions: "We have to make a conscious decision never to talk down to children."

To hear the rest from a professional reader, go to Mem's website and listen for yourself. She reads to adults from Reading Magic the way children should be read to -- like she's having a great time. 

Another great part of Mem's website is her ten read-aloud commandments. Not all can be applied to our Read-Alouds, but here are some that can:

• Read aloud with animation. Listen to your own voice and don’t be dull, or flat or boring. Hang loose and be loud, have fun and laugh a lot.


• Read with joy and enjoyment: real enjoyment for yourself and great joy for the listeners.


• Let children hear lots of language by talking to them constantly about the pictures, or anything else connected to the book; or sing any old song that you can remember; or say nursery rhymes in a bouncy way; or be noisy together doing clapping games.


• Look for rhyme, rhythm or repetition in books for young children, and make sure the books are really short.


• Play games with the things that you and the child can see on the page, such as letting kids finish rhymes and finding the letters that start the child’s name and yours, remembering that it’s never work, it’s always a fabulous game.

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

Report Feature: Pizza Party!

What could be better than pizza? 

The kids at a recent Carpenter’s Shelter Read-Aloud could not contain their exuberance when they found out they were going to make their own pizzas and get to eat them!  

The kids were set up with English muffins, pizza sauce and toppings (including lots of cheese!). They assembled their own personal pizzas with a little help from volunteers. There is nothing better than a delicious snack made just the way you like it!

Recipe:
English muffins (split)
Pizza sauce
Mozzarella cheese

Put the pizzas in a toaster oven set to broil. Have someone keep an eye on them so the cheese doesn't burn!

While the pizzas were toasting, volunteers read the following books about pizza:
The Little Red Hen by Philemon Sturges
The Princess and the Pizza by Mary Jane
Dragon Pizzeria by Mary Morgan

The kids at Carpenter's especially loved Dragon Pizzeria. They loved it when all the adult readers got involved with voices for all the charaters. When the adults are into the story, the kids will get in to it too!

While you're sitting with the kids eating pizza, start a conversation about the books or even just about food.  Ask the kids to name their favorite kind of pizza, and then ask what they'd like to put on it next time. You'll all have a great time -- it's not hard to keep a roomful of kids excited about pizza!

Here's to a creative and delicious Read-Aloud idea!



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

Setting the Stage for a Book

What you do before you begin reading is just as important to a Read-Aloud as the book itself. Setting the stage for whatever book you're going to read is a critical part of a Read-Aloud, and for a young reader it can make the difference between a good time and a depressingly school-like experience. One of the immediate goals of a Read-Aloud is for the kids to enjoy themselves. For that to happen, they need to feel comfortable and get excited about the story. 

This is another reason that it's important to be familiar with the book you're going to read. What is the setting of the book? What decisions do the characters face? What are some themes that young readers might relate to? Here are some techniques for setting the stage and getting kids involved before the first page is turned.

Set the stage, literally.

ARHA volunteers set the scene for an ocean themed
Read-Aloud with a fishing game and beach visors.

At a Read-Aloud at ARHA last summer, one team announced that the theme of the day was going to be the beach and then emptied a bag full of brightly colored towels on to the floor! The kids had a blast choosing towels and spreading them out on the floor to sit on. They even put on sunscreen!

Doing something special to get prepared for a story goes a long way toward putting kids in a story-time mood, and sitting on a beach towel while listening to a story about the beach gives them something to relate to. The technique of saying, "We're going to read a story about the beach, so we'd better get ready to go to the beach!" creates a sense of anticipation for the story.

This technique can be recreated for many different themes, and you can take it as far as you want to.

Ask questions.

"Have any of you ever been to the beach?" "What's your favorite thing to do there?" "Do you like to swim?" "What happens when a wave hits you?" "What kind of food do you eat at the beach?"  Asking the kids questions not only gets them involved intellectually and makes them feel valued, but also leads them directly into the story.

Don't be afraid to talk about the subject before the story has even started--a good book makes it easy to strike up conversation! It'll get the kids thinking about the topic and their natural curiosity will lead them to listen as you read about it.  Getting the kids thinking about the Read-Aloud topic before you start reading will also increase their understanding of the story.  It's called "activating background knowledge" and it is a key part of reading comprehension.

Introduce the activities before you start the story.

If your theme is baking and you're planning on decorating cupcakes after the story, say that at the beginning: "How many of you like cupcakes? Well, we're going to hear a story about a boy who makes the most beautiful cupcakes and then we're going to decorate some ourselves!"

All of these techniques are about getting kids engaged with the theme. Everyone is more likely to listen to material they're interested in, and having something to look forward to will help young readers get excited and engaged. For kids who are unfamiliar with or apathetic toward reading, knowing there are interesting stories out there and learning that reading isn't something that you only do in school will make them feel more positive toward books and reading in general. So: set the stage, get in the mood, and have a great time reading!

Post by The Reading Connection intern Anna McCormally.


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

Read-Alouds with parents

Parents at Read-Alouds?  You bet! 

At The Reading Connection, we're all about helping families create home environments that support reading. Doing that in a long-lasting way means helping parents get their kids excited about books.

Does it change the dynamic of the volunteer-led Read-Aloud when parents are there? Of course it does. But it is all worth it to have  more people in a kid's life having fun with books. 

Volunteers from Alive! House in Alexandria, where parents attend every Read-Aloud, tell us that the kids like having their parents there. The kids are usually better behaved and they love showing their crafts to their mothers.

So if parents drop in to your Read-Aloud (or if your site requires their participation), try these strategies to engage them:

Be welcoming and encouraging!  Introduce yourself to the parent and find out who her children are. Share your experiences with her kids and ask about her kids' interests and feelings about reading. Give her a sneak preview of the night's theme and activity.

Invite them to participate.  Grown-ups like having fun too. And parents are great at modeling how to listen to a story and how to chime in with rhymes and repetition. When you break into smaller groups to read, invite a parent to join your small group. They may also enjoy helping with the activity or listening as their child chooses a book to keep.

Model book-sharing and conversation about books.  Some parents may never have seen how their child reacts to a book being read aloud. Some may not be familiar with talking about a book with a child while reading it. Watching you and a child have fun with books can build a parent's confidence to try it herself. 

Use the Promises and stay positive.  If kids need to be refocused during a Read-Aloud, and you are feeling self-conscious about guiding a child whose parent is attending, remember your TRC Promises. The kids know that at a Read-Aloud everyone agrees to "Listen, Respect, Cooperate and Have Fun." Ask for, and model, the behavior you want to see from the child.

Meet parents where they are.  Remember that you are a guest in their home. Some parents may be more engaged than others, and that's just fine. Remember that while most of the families we serve are under an enormous amount of stress, TRC moms and dads, like all parents, want their kids to learn and have fun. 


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

Hard times generation: Homeless kids

This story from the TV show "60 Minutes," Hard times generation: Homeless kids, gives a kid's perspective on the experience of being homeless. It was recognized by the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth with a President's Award for Outstanding Media Representation of Homeless Education.

The experiences our kids have prior to getting into a shelter and how they feel about what their families are going through are likely to be very similar to those of the kids profiled in this video.

Watch the video below and think about how the kids you work with might be feeling on a night you come to read with them.

You might want to check out the extras too. There are some interesting insights.


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

Gracias the Thanksgiving Turkey

Tired of this picture?

In Gracias The Thanksgiving Turkey, Joy Cowley puts a spin on a holiday story that will engage children who have had it up to here with pilgrims!

This brightly colored children's tale follows the story of Miguel, a young Puerto Rican boy living in New York City. Miguel is thrilled to receive a present from his father, a truck driver who spends his days on the road.

"Fatten this turkey for Thanksgiving," the note from Miguel's father reads. "I’ll be home to share it with you. Love from Papá."

Conflict ensues when Miguel befriends Gracias the turkey, whom he then hesitates to eat. Problems range from where the turkey will sleep in a tiny New York apartment, to whether or not the turkey can come to Mass. I won't spoil the ending, but kids will love Miguel's struggle over Gracias -- as well as his reunion with his father.

Gracias is characterized by bright pictures and colors, and a multi-cultural dimension makes this story unique in a way that is missing from many more traditional Thanksgiving stories.

For activities to go along with this book, consider the tried-and-true hand turkey: have the kids trace their hands on construction paper and cut out the tracings. Have them give the turkeys names, like Miguel did with Gracias. Talk about pets that they might have or have had, and how to take care of them.

For ideas of other Thanksgiving-related activities, check out this website.

Post by The Reading Connection intern Anna McCormally.


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

Using Children's Magazines

Fed up with fiction? Some young readers are hungry for facts on their favorite topics—and that kind of curiosity should never go unattended! Nothing lends itself to a Read-Aloud like a kid who’s eager to learn more about a topic. Sometimes it can be hard to find a nonfiction book that’s not too dry, so don’t be afraid to turn to other media.

Kids' magazines provide great, concise reading material: they’re full of short articles, activities, and brightly-colored pictures. National Geographic Kids, Sports Illustrated Kids, Time for Kids, Click and Dig are just a few of the excellent kids' magazines being published.

Ranger Rick is a good example of a magazine designed for knowledge-hungry kids. It is a monthly children's magazine published by the National Wildlife Federation and narrated by this guy:

The magazine explores different topics about the animal kingdom and great outdoors. It can be great for introducing readers to new topics or exploring ones they already know a little bit about. The design is especially good for short attention spans! Big print, diagrams, and easy-to-read maps characterize the articles, and some of them are tailor-made to adult/kid reading pairs. Consider the article “In search of seashells” from the September 2011 issue.

The article provides activity ideas for kids on a seashell hunt: playing games with the shells, creating art projects, telling stories, and even classifying them using simple classification tools explained in the article. ("'Uni' means one, 'bi' means two" an illustrated girl explains.) All of the activities they describe can easily be turned into a Read-Aloud with a handful of seashells and some other books about the beach and sea animals. Even better, the article is short enough to keep even the most fidgety reader's interest.

For a kid interested in wild animals, Ranger Rick offers plenty of pictures of wide-toothed sharks and true stories about silly animal antics. If a kid is having trouble engaging in the Read-Aloud, stories about monkeys being chased through the streets by policemen in India might just do the trick! After you've gotten your reader's attention, why not keep it by following up with a Curious George story or a non-fiction book about monkeys?

Children's magazines can serve as a great segue into a new subject or as a way to mix things up if they're getting dull. Consider checking them out next time you're at the library if you know you have a particularly bouncy kid.

More activities can be found at the National Wildlife Federation's Ranger Rick website.

Post by The Reading Connection intern Anna McCormally.


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