Parents-I found this is on
Michael Rosen’s Blog and thought it would be useful to help every child become better readers.
So what can we do to help children understand what they are asked to read?
1. Arrange children in pairs or small
groups to talk about something they are reading or have read
- without intervention from adults.
2. Take children to a library and encourage them to borrow anything that they want. Keep doing it.
3. Arrange for times when children can
look at a book, or books, quietly on their own for a while.
4. Encourage children to collect
printed matter so that they can browse it, sort it and re-sort it: e.g.
comics, annuals, cheap second hand books, series, magazines etc.
5. If children ever ask you a question
about something in a newspaper, on TV, in a book, on the internet, try any of
the following: say a) that you're not really sure, b) how can we find
out? c) where can we find out? d) read the 'answer' together, e) discuss what
the child or you find.
6. In picture books, there are many
illustrations and parts of the illustrations that are not expressed or
described in the words of the book. Get into a conversation with the children
about what that person or creature might be thinking or saying. If there's
time, you or they can write this down - perhaps as speech bubbles on
stickers.
7. Try to avoid asking closed-ended
'right or wrong' questions about what children are reading.
8. Try to think up open-ended questions
which have different plausible answers which can be discussed: e.g.
questions about whether you think things turned out in a scene in ways
that were 'fair' or 'unfair'? whether this or that character was likeable or
not? why do you think that this or that character did something? Was there
anything else they might have done? What would you do? What would you think if
that happened to you?
9. Try to arrange for children to think
up plausible story-lines that took place before what they've read or might take
place after - i.e. 'prequels' and 'sequels'.
10. Help the children to talk about
other books, films, TV programmes which the book they're reading might remind
them of…why? how?
11. Help the children to talk about events
in their own life (or in the lives of people they know) which they are reminded
of by the book they're reading.
12. Talk about what books or sources
help us find things out when we don't understand something -
dictionaries, reference books, wikipedia, encyclopaedias…
13. Arrange for some time when they can
make up words and their definitions - like a mock-dictionary or
nonsense-dictionary.
14. Arrange for children to be in pairs
or groups to read something out loud. Encourage them to direct each other so
that they split the passage up into parts and think of ways of making their
performance better (more interesting/exciting/funny etc).
15. Play the titles game - thinking up
alternative titles for the chapter, poem or book that they've read. Discuss
these together.
16. Imagining that someone else is
reading the passage/poem/book. What if you weren't you, but you were someone
else very different from you - choose that person…would you have the same
thoughts about what you've read - or different? How and why?
17. Play 'substitution' games:
what happens if you tell the 'same' story, but changing one or more of the
characters into - e.g. animals? or from animals to humans? or by swapping
the sexes of the people? or by changing just one character into e.g.
someone you know? Or: what happens if you keep the plot and all the characters
and change the time-frame to e.g. the future, the past, the present? What
happens if you keep the plot and change the setting to somewhere completely
different e.g. to a school, a beach, a shop, a party etc etc?
18. Recommendations: discuss amongst
children what might be the best ways of recommending a book or magazine
or comic to someone else. What are helpful things for someone to know if a
book is good or not? Then, try to say or write to those guidelines.
19. 'The message': (or messages).
Discuss the idea that books, films, TV programmes pass on messages.
You can use the example of the 'moral' at the end of an Aesop fable or a
Jesus parable. So at the end of a poem or chapter or book, is there a
'message', some different messages, a 'moral', different 'morals'.
Discuss what these might be. What would happen if things turned out
differently…(different ending or outcome) would the 'moral' be different?
20. In poems and stories, people
and creatures can 'represent' things other than what they are. So, in
Little Red Riding Hood, the wolf, we might say, is both a wolf and also
'danger' or 'threat'. So is the danger just that he might eat her, or is he any
other kind of 'danger'? This is how 'symbolism' and 'figurative' language
works. Or again, Miss Haversham in 'Great Expectations', we might say, is not
only the strange old lady that we perceive, but she might also represent
Dickens' view of the state of the aristocracy - its state of decay, its
backward looking point of view, its potential for viciousness, its ultimate
potential for self-destruction??? etc. So, with examples like these (fairy
tales are very good as starters for this, but many modern songs are too) what
kinds of symbols, representative 'figures' can we see in a book or poem?
