Parents need to read to their children

source: http://www2.readaloud.org/importance 

Parents, please read aloud to your young children. It only takes a few minutes a day. When you read to your children, they will enjoy literacy with you, and they will be better prepared for school.

Did you know that children's listening comprehension is generally higher than their reading ability?  If your child is reading at level A, you can read to him/her a higher level book. 

Also, I find it lots of fun to not only read TO children, but to also read WITH children. Take turns reading sentences. Take turns reading paragraphs. Before you know it, your child will read on his/her own!

Family Literacy Event!

Thanks to a generous grant from Target, I was able to host my first Family Literacy Event today here at PS8x Library.

Last month I consulted with my Principal and we agreed to target (no pun intended, really) our youngest students. I sent out invitations to two kindergarten classes and received about 15 positive responses. It was raining and cold this morning, and I worried that nobody would show up.
Boy was I wrong.

At today's Family Literacy Event, at least 24 parents completed their survey; many parents did not complete their survey because I didn't have enough copies. I think almost 30 parents participated in all.

Today we discussed the importance of reading at home. It's so easy to not sit down with your children after a long day at work/school. We as Care-Givers face many hurdles: lack of time; fatigue; the lure of the Internet; television; insufficient funds to buy books, etc. My message today to our participants was simple: You are your child's very first teacher. You must be proactive and read WITH and TO your children everyday. In our school, we have excellent hard-working teachers. However, in most cases the student teacher ratio is 1:25. At home the child parent ratio is much more favorable. Just think the impact of just 15 minutes a day would make. If 15 minutes is too much, then start at 5 minutes. Just start.

I reviewed the surveys that were returned to me and saw that more than half of today's participants admit to reading with their children only 1x per week. This is worrisome.   
In my next Family Literacy Event, I hope to address time-saving strategies to help busy Care-Givers find time to read with their children.
What do you think?

Diary of a Wimpy Kid angst

The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney is wildly popular with kids of all ages. To be honest with you, I don't like these books. Never did. However, I always buy copies because many students want to read this, or at least they want to see what it's all about. The copies never stay on the shelves for long.

In the past few weeks I've struggled with my 7-year-old grandson because he wants to read DWK. He's in the second grade and I think he is way too young to read this. The characters are in middle school, and they deal with middle school issues. 

At first I refused to let my grandson to read it. But then I realized he is actually enthusiastic about reading this. So instead of struggling with him (he wore me down), I make it my business to read this with him, and discuss the issues that we encounter in the story: bullying, name-calling, peer-pressure, pimples, etc.

Don't get me wrong. At school I don't discourage my young students from borrowing these titles. But at home, I not only wear a Library-Teacher hat, I also wear a Grandma hat. 

What do you think?  

Thanks for stopping by my blog :)