October 2, 2010
University of New Hampshire, Portsmouth, NH
Content Area Reading and Writing

October 8, 2010
NEA-NH Instructional Conference, Bow High School, Bow, NH
Involving Parents in Their Children’s Reading Development

October 23, 2010
University of New Hampshire, Manchester, NH
Guided Reading and Running Records

November 20, 2010
University of New Hampshire, Manchester, NH
Phonemic Awareness and Phonics

Please feel free to make contact through “Author Contact” for further information. Enjoy!

     There’s good news for parents and children. Strong language skills can make children better readers. Parents can help to build those skills just by talking with their children. Share these ideas with parents:

1. Narrate everyday activities like driving, cooking, or brushing teeth. Hearing unfamiliar words in conversation will help children understand words in books. “Please hand me the colander so I can drain the spaghetti.” If a child doesn’t know a word, then parents should explain the word. For example, “this is a colander. Water drains through the holes.”

2. Encourage children to join family conversations. Ask questions to help them expand on their answers. “Why do you think so?” or “What else happened?” The child will learn to talk about events and give some opinions.

3. Want an alternative to reading bedtime stories? How about telling stories, or just sitting and talking. By sitting and talking, children are not only learning new words, but also are learning new concepts.

    The list goes on and on. Share with parents the importance of talking with their children, and you will share some of the first steps towards reading.

     It’s back to school time. Parents often ask about what they can do to help their children become better readers. The answer is easy. Reading Specialists around the world want to encourage parents to read to their children every day. Share some specific titles, such as Dr. Seuss books or personal favorites, and share the importance of every day.

     Are the children more interested in reading to themselves? That’s fine. Encourage parents to join the fun. Talk to parents about popping some popcorn, grabbing a good book, and sitting beside their child. This will help the child to read a bit longer. What’s most important is that parents share the message that reading is fun, enjoyable, and important to learn. Those are the children teachers can teach.

Talking to children before heading to bed might be more effective in helping them learn language than reading to them. According to an article in the recent Reading Today magazine, citing researchers from UCLA School of Public Health, basic conversation could be up to six times more effective than reading. Even if a baby or toddler cannot form words, primitive responses to a conversation may help develop language skills. What to do with this? Encourage parents to both read and talk with their children often.

Interested in helping your parents learn to read to their children? Not all parents know how to present a read aloud as effectively as teachers do, so you may need to show them. Present a Milk and Cookies Night. This is a night where you invite your children to school, with their parents, and maybe with pajamas, sleeping bags, pillows, stuffed animals, and whatever else might make them feel as comfortable as at home. Choose a classroom setting where there are lots of books or try to use the school library.

Choose some of your favorite books to read. Model good read aloud techniques such as showing pictures, reading with excitement, or asking interactive questions. Read two or three books, maybe taking about 20 to 30 minutes. Offer the milk and cookies as a middle of the night break. Then invite parents to choose some books, find a corner in the classroom to read to their children. Again, two or three books, maybe taking about 20 to 30 minutes. For the most success, walk around the room, interact with children and parents, and if necessary, tactfully help parents to read correctly. Most of all, make sure all participants have fun.

A special thank you to Amy Hartman, Reading Specialist/Kindergarten Teacher, from North Carolina, for this wonderful idea. I’ve followed through two times with great success.

What a wonderful surprise I found today in my mailbox at school! A $3,000 check from Target!!!

Hi, my name is Betsy and I’m a fourth grade teacher in Orlando, and the self-appointed grant-writer for our school. This summer, I challenged myself to see how many grants I could earn for our school. Last fall, I had earned a $1,000 field trip grant from Target and I realized I had been bitten by the ‘grant-bug.’ I worked for many hours on a ‘Learn & Serve’ grant this spring, and was excited when our school was awarded $5,200 for the environmental proposal I had submitted. So, as the summer months passed, I started searching the web for any grants for which our school might qualify. I was amazed to find so many available. My quest had begun.

Our grant from Target is totally based on the We Both Read series. We are a Title 1 school, with 80% of our students on free/reduced meal programs, and we are 70% Hispanic. Our students are not reaching the required goals for math, reading, science, or writing state assessments. We have a population of 970 students, pre-k to grade 5, and sadly, have less than 20 families who attend PTO meetings. We know parent involvement is the key to the success of our students. We just didn’t know how to encourage the involvement. Then, I found We Both Read.

Our grant will allow us to buy 10 complete sets of the We Both Read series, plus many accessories, and provide our student/parent partners with incentive prizes as students are successful with their leveled books.

We will be holding monthly mini-workshops with 1/2 hour parenting sessions for ‘tips to help’ and 1/2 hour Celebration sessions with a light snack provided by our Partners-In-Education sponsors.

Fran, from Customer Service, was so excited to hear about our grant. She asked me to submit a post here to encourage other teachers to find the means to reach the parents.

The Target Grants are the most-friendly grants out there. They are calendar related, but it’s never too early to start thinking of a proposal. In the meantime, you can look for other literacy grants. There is a lot of money out there for Early Readers, which is the section of the Target Foundation which honored our grant.

The most important thing to remember is that you’ll never know if you can be awarded a grant until you try. (Don’t be surprised if you, too, aren’t bitten by the grant-bug once you are awarded your first one.)

Betsy