Friend or Fiend? by Judy Blume- The Best First Chapter Book

Friend or Fiend? by Judy Blume-
If you where looking for a great first chapter book for your child, this is the one. The stories are about a brother and sister, the Pain and the Great One. Unlike many other first chapter books, in which kids are badly behaved, Blume’s characters are just adorable, funny, and interesting. You will enjoy reading these chapters as much as your child.
Happy Reading!

Tacky the Penguin – Helen Lester- Something for Laughs

Tacky the Penguin- by Helen Lester- Something To Make Kids Laugh

Tacky is an odd bird. He does not blend in with other penguins. He has his own style, his own way of greeting and marching and splashing… And when he sings, others wish that he’d stop, but one day when the hunters come to hunt for penguins, Tacky saves the day. You’ll have to find out how.. This is a perfect story for 4-8 years olds. They will laugh and ask for a reread.

Happy Reading!

Wemberly Worried- Kevin Henkes- Something for the kids who worry

Wemberly Worried – by Kevin Henkes

Wemberly worries about everything, little things, big things, and things in between. She worries all day and all night long about all kinds of things, like, the crack in the wall, the radiator noise, her doll, having no friends, etc. Wemberly worries very much, but at the end she seems to become better able to manage her worries. To find out about the end, you’ll have to read the story. The kids will like it, and it will definitely make them laugh. Being worried and fearsome is a normal part of childhood. I found that this story really hits home with second grade students. Second graders are constant worriers. They are kind of like Wemberly . This is also a perfect story for a child who is about to go into a new school or start a new grade. 

Hope you enjoy it!

Let Your Child Read Comics!

Improve your child’s reading. Let him read a comic!

Comic book are great for readers of any age. For the very young, who cannot read yet, every picture tells a story. And for the kids who are readers, comic books not only teach sophisticated vocabulary, which they might not hear from regular speech, but they teach kids to make inferences. 

And why are inferences important? They teach kids how to understand what they read and see to their own knowledge of the world. Inferencing is directly tied to reading comprehension. 

Anyhow, next time your child’s teacher, librarian, or a tutor shuns comic books, remember inferencing .

Read on!

Happy Summer!

Reading Fluency K-2

Once children know their letters and can read simple CVC words, such as cat, dog, hat, they are ready to take a next step. But this next step can cause frustration in both children and parents.

Students come out of kindergarten reading letter by letter. And if they are not taught word families, they continue to read letter by letter even when words get bigger. This impedes decoding, fluency, and comprehension, and causes great stress.

To address this, students should be taught word families, as I noted in one of my previous posts. Word family study is often referred as “chunking”. Students learn to “chunk words” by learning rhyme patterns/word families. For example…

-ash

dash

smash

rash

trash

Hooked on Phonics books are great for learning and teaching word families and chunking. Hooked on Phonics books progress in difficulty and each story reviews words/word families prior to child’s reading. As with other phonics material, stories don’t offer much of a story line, but they are good practice of word families/chunking.

Fancy Nancy- Something for Girls- Connor and Glasser

Fancy Nancy- by O’Connor and Glasser

Fancy Nancy is glamorous. Fancy Nancy not only makes everything and everyone fancy, but she also tries to make everything sound fancy by using French words. And French does make everything sound fancier. In this book Nancy dresses her whole family fancy and they go out for dinner. This book is a great vocabulary builder. And the illustrator presents this book in such beautiful details that will keep every girl wanting to look as fancy as Fancy Nancy.

Happy Reading!

Your Young Reader

We all read stories to our children, but there are few extra steps that you should take while reading to strengthen the reading process.

Before reading the story, show your child the front and end of the book, talk about the author and illustrator. What are their jobs? What might the story be about? Can we tell from the cover picture?

Read the story and while you are reading, drag your finger under the words that you are reading.

Show your child capital letter at the beginning of each sentence.

Show him punctuation marks, tell him/he what they stand for. 

Point out to your child that the sentences are made out of words, and that words have spaces between them.

Ask questions about the story. Relate it to the child’s life. 

Read stories with rhymes and rhyming words.

Re-read the story and let your child supply the rhyme and/or rhyming words.