by Donna | Jul 15, 2010
What if your child is a terrific reader but has trouble with math? What about history and social studies? How can you help your child in the content areas this summer?
I will start today with the idea of keeping the skills your child has already developed during the academic year and then moving in to helping to build his skills in specific subjects.
If your child is at grade level and you do not feel a need to INCREASE his skills this summer but rather just help him keep the skills he has, you will probably do well with any of those “summer” workbooks. I personally like the “Comprehensive Curriculum” books.
With the “summer” type of workbooks, you would get the one for the grade level your child just finished (not the one he is about to go into).
I personally like the general ones that have a little bit of each subject. The one that Jakie is doing this summer has five areas of study (reading, writing, math, social studies, science), and he has to complete one page from each area on our “summer school” days. This makes it simple for him and for me.
These types (especially the Comprehensive Curriculum ones) are super inexpensive (and in color—actually amazingly affordable for such high quality).
I get mine at the wholesale club, but here is a link for some you may order online: https://www.homeschoolingsupply.com/cgi-bin/search/search.cgi?Terms=Comprehensive+Curriculum or https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1561893706/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_3?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=1561893749&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=0K5ZBEAQMA84RND0WKW0
Another option is to just print off various types of worksheets online for your child to do. I prefer having all of the pages in one book in a systematic order—and the color of the workbooks makes it more appealing than isolated workbook pages. However, if you just want to have him practice just writing or just math, you might want to do a search for free worksheets online. The internet is a plethora of materials for you to use with your student.
I can’t end a “keep your child’s academic skills alive” post without reminding you of the two things that can do more to build reading, content area (history, science, etc.), and thinking skills than any workbook could: (1) reading together; and (2) discussion. Don’t overlook these two avenues for keeping your child’s school skills sharp.
by Donna | Jul 14, 2010
“I love the library; the magnificent books; I require books as I require air.” unknown
One of the keys to getting your child to enjoy reading with you is to read what he enjoys. This can be difficult if your child is not a strong reader and does not choose to read for himself for pleasure. Reading will quite possibly be looked at as a negative experience. Why would I choose to read when it is so hard and lacks fulfillment?
One way to counteract this is to choose materials that he enjoys. Consider these tips*:
1. Let him choose the book, if you are reading a chapter book.
2. Choose a book with multiple stories rather than one long story. For example, the popular Encyclopedia Brown series (and a new Christian fiction series called Scripture Sleuth for fourth to fifth grader readers) contains chapters in which each one contains its own separate story. Each chapter stands alone. This is a good strategy for students who do not feel that they can read lengthy chapter books yet. Additionally, school readers can have interesting stories that are self contained. When you are done reading for that session, you will be done with the entire story. This can be very satisfying to kids. Ask your librarian to direct you to other books that contain short stories that might interest your student as opposed to one story throughout the entire “chapter book.”
3. Consider non-book reading. Some kids do well with magazines. Others enjoy comic books. Newspapers or sports magazines appeal to some kids. You do not have to read “a book” in order to read with your child everyday.
4. Daily devotionals are good to read together. They generally contain extremely short excerpts that can be read silently in five to ten minutes (orally a little longer), and can provide much discussion and application material.
5. Adult texts can also be enjoyed by older students. Specifically, I am thinking of Guideposts or Reader’s Digest, but there are many more varied texts that kids would like too. Again, it’s about what your child will WANT to read each day with you. If he hates reading each day, it will be a struggle and will fall by the wayside.
6. Animal books, nature books, and other non-fiction materials are often enjoyed by students. Again, these can be books, like Usborne, Dorling-Kindersley, or Eyewitness or can be magazines, like National Geographic for kids or Nature’s Friend. (Magazines often have puzzles, quizzes, etc. that when done together and discussed can also aid in comprehension building.)
7. Again, adult literacy materials can provide more “grown up” material for students who do not read at grade level but are too old for “cutsie” books, say for second graders. Ask your librarian for these or look them up at an adult literacy provider, such as “Each One Teach One.” (See earlier link about Saxon Phonics Intervention and Saxon BOLD and bringing older students up to grade level in reading.)
*These same tips can be applied to choosing materials for your child to read to himself.
by Donna | Jul 12, 2010
If your child is out of the phonics instruction stage, but you still want to help him increase his reading and comprehension skills this summer, do not overlook the simple act of reading WITH your child.
You may desire to have your student read aloud to you each day and discuss it. This simple fifteen minute act can do wonders to help a child build his reading skills.
Here are some tips for reading with your child to help build his reading fluency:
1. Take turns reading—you read a page, then he reads a page.
2. Take turns reading—you read a paragraph, then he reads a paragraph.
3. Take turns reading certain characters. This works better if you each have a copy of the book and the book contains a lot of dialogue, but it can be a fun way to read together AND keep your child’s interest high as his mind cannot wander while he waits on his turn to read (since you will likely be going back and forth frequently with dialogue).
4. Focus on discussion rather than questions. Generally speaking, when a worksheet or curriculum asks your child questions at the end of a reading, it is TESTING your child, not helping him build comprehension. (The exception to this is if the questions tell the student where in the text to look for the answers, instruct him to notice certain parts of a word to build vocabulary (i.e. circle the prefix re in a word), help him learn after he answers the question by explaining the answer, etc.) Thus, simply asking your child questions without explanations is testing him, not teaching him.
5. Consider some of the following after your reading in order to build comprehension:
a. Discuss what you have just read—what did he like, what did you like, why, etc. Through discussion, you will have a chance to TEACH. For example, if you say that you liked a certain character because he found humor in everyday situations. Then you will have the opportunity to tell when in the book or what was happening when the character found humor. That is building comprehension at the highest levels (motivation of a character’s actions; possibly predicting outcomes, etc.). Much better than rote answers to questions.
b. If you ask him questions, be ready to help him learn from the answers, right or wrong. For example, if you ask him why he thinks the neighbor did not like the kids in the neighborhood and he does not have an answer, don’t just say, “Because the neighbor was angry.” Instead say, “I think it’s because the neighbor had been through so many bad things that he was bitter. Remember how it said that his wife died years ago…” Just answering comprehension questions does not give our kids tools to use in the next reading situation they are in—discussing the answers does.
c. Let him ask you questions—alternate. Again, your answers and how you found them (especially why you answered the way you did) will help build his comprehension better than if he just did a worksheet with questions.
More on building comprehension in days to come—but for now, just start in…read what your child loves, share it together, discuss it, and enjoy it. You will grow in your “teaching skills” as you share books together.
by Donna | Jul 7, 2010
If your child is in second through sixth grade and knows all of his or phonics sounds but is not a “fluent reader”—for our purposes here, a child who can read books that are expected at his school at his grade level, you would be surprised the little things that you can do to help your student. In the next few days, I will give tips concerning this scenario.
Kids Reading This Summer–Just Do It!
Do not underestimate the power of simply reading. If your student is a reluctant or struggling reader, but can read, I recommend that you implement a daily silent reading time for your student.* (Actually, I recommend this for everybody—kids and adults, struggling or not!) There are many ways to implement this:
1. Go to the library and pull a series that your child will enjoy. (I will give some suggestions in days to come, but ask your friends what their kids are reading, ask your librarian for suggestions of books in areas that interest your child, etc.)
2. Consider a 15 to 30 minute silent reading time each day during the summer (or each non-vacation, weekday). You could set this up as a certain time that everybody reads or just make a declaration that everybody must read for fifteen minutes before other activities outside the home (i.e. swimming, friends, etc.).
3. Create a reading chart with squares that are worth fifteen minutes each. So many squares equal prizes or so many squares must be colored in per week. (More on creating your own summer reading program for your kids in upcoming posts.)
4. Get your child a series of chapter books that he or she will enjoy reading and have him or her read a book a week at his own pace and on his own timetable—as long as it is read by Friday at five or whatever the deadline might be.
5. Consider alternative reading materials, like comic books, magazines, books with individual stories in each chapter (as opposed to books in which one story is broken up into chapters), etc. if your child is extremely reluctant.
6. Do not make each reading a “lesson.” Discuss his reading, if desired, but the purpose of this is to get him reading—not necessarily to do reading lessons.
*See readability posts from earlier this summer for help in choosing materials at your child’s reading level.
by Donna | Jul 5, 2010
In this final installment of readability help, I want to leave you with some resources. Again, do you need to know the level of every book your child reads? Certainly not, but if you want to start having your child read to you in preparation for school, and he or she does little pleasure reading, you might want to check out some of the links below to help you determine where to begin. (More on moving your child along in reading fluency, reading rate, and more in the upcoming days.)
1. Site to key in title, author, etc. of a book and get that book’s readability level—the first site is one that I was led to from the reading link I gave a couple of days ago. I didn’t know it existed—and I have to say that it is way cool. It is from Scholastic, and it is a free site in which you can find the readability level of many, many books (Scholastic and otherwise). I just keyed in a couple of our readalouds, and voila! The readability level popped right up. https://bookwizard.scholastic.com/tbw/homePage.do
2. The next link is helpful for determining readability if you are reading isolated stories, articles, etc. It was created by the man who developed the most widely used readability formula, G. Harry McLaughlin. It is called SMOG—Simple Measure of Gobbledygook, and was invented before computers could quickly do the computations necessary for readability level determination (in 1969). According to McLaughlin, it is a simple formula in which one counts the words of three or more syllables in three 10-sentence samples, estimates the count’s square root, and adds three. That’s way more math than I ever want to do—and especially more math than I want to do to simply figure out if a text is appropriate reading level for my child. (This formula was widely used for health and medical information, to ensure that this data was readable by the general public.) But don’t worry—computers to the rescue! At the following link, you just key in a portion of the text in question, and voila! It gives you an approximate readability level for that text.. SMOG: https://www.harrymclaughlin.com/SMOG.htm
We will look at building reading fluency in the child who doesn’t necessarily need phonics instruction but still needs to increase his reading skills, in the days to come—sort of moving out of the “beginning reader” phase into upper elementary reading help.
Remember, whether you are a trained teacher/tutor, whether you understand readability formulas or not, whether you remember all your phonics instruction (!) –are not the important factors in your helping your kids academically this summer. Showing them that learning and their school—and the children themselves—are important to you are the crucial factors in helping your kids.
And also keep in mind that anything is better than nothing at all—just sit down with your kids in the days to come and say, “Let’s read something together…” and get the ball rolling in preparing your reluctant learner to go back to school in six to eight weeks.
