Burlington Public Schools Early Childhood Information Series: Session 4
Reading At Home
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Reading to children helps to foster many areas of development including but not limited to:
● Language Development (vocabulary and communication)
● How to handle books
● Attending (concentration and memory retention)
● Joint Attention
● Logical Thinking
There are so many books choices out there... How do we narrow down which forms of literature are right for our children?
Types of Literature:
● Story Books
○ These books have a specific beginning, middle, and end
○ Great for sequencing and retelling
○ Lend themselves nicely to answering and asking /wh/ questions
● Predictable Books
○ Include repetitive text or concepts
○ Great opportunity for choral responding
○ Likely the first books that kids will learn to “read”
○ Can build phonemic awareness
○ Often incorporate rhyming text
● Books on Tape/E-books
○ do not take the place of reading to your children, but can certainly be used as a fun tool that kids can do independently.
● Informational Books
○ Can be used to teach and explore non-fiction concepts
○ Often include great illustration or photography of things in real life
○ Do not need to read the whole book, but can pull out concepts to aid in learning to make connections
○ Seasonal books lend themselves to great real life connections and exploring
● Nonsense Books
○ Books where the actual text do not have a true story line, but are just fun to read!
○ Includes Dr. Suess
● Wordless/Limited Word Books
○ Lend themselves to facilitating language based on illustration
○ Can be used to teach “word bubbles” or the concept that
characters talk to each other in books just like we do
Activities to Follow Up:
● Act it out
○ make costumes
○ retell the story
○ take turns being different characters
○ make props
● Create a follow up group book
○ Brown Bear, Brown Bear (Naomi, Naomi, what do you see?)
● Make a list of connections
○ text to self
○ text to text
● Scavenger hunts/Obstacle course
● Changing part of books
○ What would happen if?
● Write a book
○ Scribble
○ Scribble
○ Dictate
○ Illustrate
○ Use technology
What great things have you done with literature in your homes?
What are the challenges you face?
