Photo from South Suburban College

The following is an excerpt from my latest book, The Pringle Plan For Kindergarten Comprehension: A Guide For Parents and Teachers of Kindergarten, Dyslexia, Speech and Language, And Other Special Education Students

Purpose of Read Alouds: Part I

ONCE YOUR STUDENT HAS DEVELOPED BASIC PRE-READING SKILLS, he is ready to learn to read. He’s not really reading yet, and he is certainly not properly literate yet, but he is at the learning stage. You will be amazed how fast he progresses. A huge leap occurs from the beginning of kindergarten to the end. An even larger leap happens from the beginning of first grade to the end of that year. Those leaps will continue each year until finally in fourth grade he will no longer be learning to read, he will be reading to learn!

The purpose of Reading Aloud to your students is to provide them with an opportunity to share our common cultures, explore new topics, and learn new vocabulary. By listening to and thinking about stories, your students will gain the comprehension skills they are not developing while busy decoding and memorizing words. Read Aloud to your students for at least fifteen minutes per day. In the process, they will hear the rhythm and flow of how language is used in complete sentences. They will gain a better appreciation for how a sentence represents a more complete thought than mere words and phrases do, and they will experience the joy of story. Reading Aloud to your students will help them become more effective writers and communicators. While Reading Aloud to your students, you will teach background knowledge, build vocabulary, and develop listening, memory, and comprehension skills. Students who are read to, have a much easier time learning to read than those who don’t have this exposure to language and literature. In addition, students who are read to make faster and deeper leaps into comprehension. They are the ones who will become properly literate.

TEACH BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE

Start building background knowledge from infancy, and never stop. You don’t need to have a book in your hands all the time. Talk to your child. Explain everything. Explain how things work, how you use them and why you use them. Name people, places, things, actions, concepts, descriptors, and feelings. Look at family photos, talk about family members, teach family traditions, and look at maps and photos of where they are from. Go outside and name the trees, and plants. Talk about the weather and how it affects the plants. Your child has entered the world with a blank slate. Help him fill it up with any tidbit of information you can think of. As they begin to grow, children have lots of questions – answer them, even if you already have. They are trying to understand the world around them. Help them understand. The more background information they have the better. You see, books don’t explain everything. Authors often assume readers know certain things like: vocabulary - what a mountain is vs. a hill; settings - which animals live in a jungle vs. a forest or a farm; and characters - recognizing other people have feelings and emotions too. So, it’s up to parents and teachers to provide that background knowledge. Without it, reading comprehension will be slow and frustrating. The more background knowledge your child has, the more connections he will make, and the easier it will be for him to understand what is being read to him, as well as, what he is reading independently. Remember our ultimate goal is literacy, true literacy – not just decoding words on a page. You want your child – or student, to comprehend and derive meaning from those sentences he just read. So talk, answer questions, listen to what he has to say, correct misinformation, and listen again.

BUILD VOCABULARY

Another way to ensure your student will develop reading comprehension skills and become properly literate, is to develop strong vocabulary skills from an early age. Never be afraid to use big or unfamiliar words in front of your child. Remember – everything is unfamiliar! Your job is to fill that blank slate. You are going to do this through the simple act of daily conversation. Over simplifying your word choices undermines your child’s vocabulary development. Use rich vocabulary. Children are able to understand more than they are able to articulate. When they hear you use big words, they will enjoy the challenge of trying to imitate your articulation abilities. If they don’t understand something you’ve said, they will ask. Explain what words mean as needed. You don’t need to quiz your child on definitions, just talk. He will pick up some meaning through the context of the conversation. Some words he may not understand at all. That’s ok. At least when he gets to school and comes across that word in a book he is reading it will not be the first time he has ever heard it. Because he has heard it before, he won’t be afraid of it. He won’t feel overwhelmed by it. He won’t think, “There are smart people who know big words, there are people who only know small words, and I’m in the small group.” By using an elaborative style of speech that provides explanatory detail, your child will understand that he is expected and capable of learning and understanding large words and a diversity of topics. Whether as an adult or a child, reading comprehension is more likely to happen when we are familiar with 90% of the words we read. Remember my earlier example (blog post 6/11/18) of how meaningless a sports article would be to me. Make sure that doesn’t happen to your child when he is reading about history, other cultures, American government, nature, science experiments, and anything else that makes our world so interesting!

Tips for Developing Vocabulary:

· Use an elaborative style of speech – explain everything! Provide definitions, context and details.

· Answer questions.

· Build background knowledge through conversation and Read Alouds.

· Stay on the same topic or theme for 1-2 weeks so words and topic become familiar.

· Read multicultural books.

· Use diverse topics with a Kindergarten theme and beyond. Choose topics of interest to your

child and family.

· Pair non-fiction with fiction books on the same topic to help build background knowledge.

· Use a child’s recipe book for cooking together.

· Sing songs together.

· Recite Nursery rhymes together.

· Label things in pictures, and in your home or classroom.

· Write words on index cards. Collect words in a word bank (shoebox), or create a word wall or

notebook.

· Teach basic concept words using demonstration and practice: On, under, in, forward, backward, above, below, beside, between, through, around, whole, half, separated, together, wide, narrow, small, medium, large, same, different, more, less, inside, outside, top, bottom, near, far, in front, behind, short, long, pair, in a row, full, empty.

· Teach attribute words: large, big, small, tiny, narrow, wide, rough, smooth, soft, hard, thin, skinny, medium, fat, color words, shape words, and emotion words.

· Teach feature words - Here is a small sample of household items: toothpaste, telephone, lamp,

vacuum, brush, shower, scissors, washer, kitchen sink, and refrigerator. Now name the features of those items: Tube, cap, speaker, receiver, switch, lamp shade, base, cord, plug, bristles, handle, faucet, spout, drain, shower curtain, curtain rings, curtain rod, blade, buttons, sprayer, drain plug, door, shelf, and drawer.

· Teach function words - Explain the purpose of all those household items: to clean our teeth, talk to someone, give light, clean the floor, brush hair, clean ourselves, cut paper, clean our clothes, wash dishes, and to keep food cold.

· Go on family field trips, run errands together, and participate in play groups. It’s all an opportunity to come across new vocabulary.

· Demonstrate verbs: walk, run, hop, jump, skip, gallop, toss, throw, kick, etc…

· Use articles in sentences: the, a, an.

· Nouns: Teach how to identify person, place or thing, by naming nouns.

· Plural vs. singular: Teach how to tell if someone is talking about one thing, or more than one.

· Use Punctuation words: period, question mark, exclamation point, comma, and quotation marks.

Teach the word “punctuation.”

· Teach how to use Pronouns: I, me, my, mine, you, your, yours, he, him, his, she, her, hers, we, us, our, ours, them, their, theirs. Focus on one group of words at a time.

1. Play a simple pronoun game by passing a doll or stuffed animal to family members. As the doll goes around the circle, your student practices saying, “I have the doll. You have the doll. She has the doll. He has the doll. They have the doll.”

2. Next, the child instructs, “Please give it to me. Please give it to him. Please give it to her. Please give it to them.”

3. After that, move to the bedroom area. Now the doll will move to different rooms, while your student practices saying, “It’s in my room. It’s in his room. It’s in her room. It’s in their room.”

4. Last, the doll passes to each person again. This time your student practices saying, “This is my doll. It’s mine. This is your doll. It’s yours. This is his doll. It’s his. This is her doll. It’s hers. This is their doll. It’s theirs.” Finally, say, “We will share the doll. It lives with us.”

DEVELOP LISTENING SKILLS

Quality listening skills are essential to becoming a good reader. Listening requires focus and comprehension. When you listen to someone else read a story, you need to focus your attention on that person; hear the words they are speaking; have the background knowledge to understand the meaning of 90% of those words; have the ability to process the other 10% of words in context in order to guess their meaning; maintain enough interest and memory to be able to follow the story with an awareness of the sequence of events; understand the consequences of cause and effect; keep track of the characters and setting; understand what the problem is and how it is resolved; and infer the author’s purpose for writing the story.

So how many kindergarteners can do all that?!! Not many! This means, they need to learn how. Remember your kindergarteners are still at the pre-reading stage. What I just described is the listening skills of a good reader. Learning to listen takes time, patience and a lot of repetition. This is one of the reasons young children ask to hear the same story over and over again. They know they didn’t get it all the first time! It’s also the reason kindergarteners interrupt with lots of questions and comments. It’s not realistic to expect all kindergarteners to sit still and quiet 100% of the time. However, in a classroom setting, it would be chaotic to have students constantly yelling out their questions. So, of course Rules for Read Alouds need to be in place: Hands quietly raised, turns taken, and questions and comments relevant to the story and topic. For parents, reading at home with fewer children, it can be a more casual time. Just be sure to emphasize your expectation that they follow the teacher’s rules in the classroom and not interfere with other student’s learning time.

When students finally become readers themselves, they will be listening to the author’s voice in their head, or at least to their own voice sounding out the words. If they don’t know how to truly listen they will never understand what they have read. There are many ways to develop listening skills. The most important will be in practicing listening to you – their parents and teachers. Face your child; make eye contact to hold attention. Speak clearly and in complete sentences. Modulate your tone and facial expressions for emphasis, comedy, and drama. Use rich language filled with detail and a wide variety of vocabulary. Model listening by looking at your child and listening with your complete attention when they ask questions, tell you their problems, or share their interests. Repeat some of what your child has said to show you are paying attention. Remember parents, you are your child’s most important teacher and role model. Your child wants to be, is trying to be, just like you.

Listening games for School:

Improve skills for focus in noisy classrooms, by learning to ignore distracting information. Walk on a string placed on the floor, while carrying a spoon filled with water, while everyone in the room is making noise, waving arms, and swaying side to side. Teach to listen first, react second. Avoid lecturing. Listen to music and identify: horns, drums, strings, flute, piano.

· Listen to 1-step directions. Instruct, “Please repeat the directions.” Give the same directions again, this time for an activity you have set up. As students are able, increase to 2-step, 3-step, 4-step, and 5-step directions.

· Listen to someone explain how to play a game. Ask, “Did you understand the directions? Try to repeat the directions.” Then play the game, to check for understanding.

· Listen to different dialects: Boston, Southern, Standard English, African American/Urban, Maine, New Jersey, Texas, and others. Try talking the way they do. Listen again. Can you name the dialect? While you are at it, pull out a map or globe, and point out the various regions, as well as where you live. Make everything about building background knowledge.

· Listen to a statement vs. a question. What’s the difference? What happens to the tone in a question? (goes up) Can you identify it with your eyes closed? Which one needs an answer?

· Listen to and clap out syllables in a word.

· Listen to and clap out words in a sentence.

· Listen to and identify beginning sounds vs. ending sounds in words.

· Listen for the space between words in a sentence. How many were there?

· Play Simon Says. Your student will have to listen very carefully!

· Listen to alliteration and identify the beginning sound.

Listening to Stories:

· Teach students to first listen with eyes closed. Focus on one instruction per story, talk about the experience, listen again with eyes open, and then end with number 9 or 10 (except when using instruction number 1).

1. Imagine the pictures in your head. Which pictures did you like best – the ones you imagined or the illustrators? Why?

2. Who - Imagine what the characters look like, where they are, what they are doing, and how they are feeling. Listen for words that provide clues.

3. What - Imagine the objects in the story (name a few things for students to focus on). What does it look like? What does it feel like? How do you feel about the object?

4. When - Think about the weather and time of day. Listen for words that provide clues.

5. Where - Imagine where the story is taking place. What does it look like, smell like, sound like, feel like?

6. Why - Think about the problem in the story. Why did the situation become a problem?

7. How - How was the problem resolved? Think about how you would have handled it.

8. Genre - Is the story real or make believe? How do you know?

9. Text - Now listen to the same story with your eyes open. Keep your eyes on the speaker and on the pictures. Did your understanding of the story change? Why/Why not?

10. Illustrations - How did the illustrations help you understand the story better?

· Listen to nursery rhymes, songs, fairy tales, fiction, and non-fiction. Repeat lines.

· Listen to how people express an emotion. Are they surprised, angry, happy, sad, playful, cozy, safe, silly, thankful, hurt, sorry, lonely, grumpy, mad, afraid, shy, quiet, worried, or curious?

· Listen to rhyme words. Which part of the word rhymes? (end) What sound did it make?

· Use Read Together books. Your child must listen in order to anticipate what his “word” will be.

· Read Predictable books. Your student must listen carefully and think about what will happen next. Ask what evidence he is using for his prediction.

· When reading, use an expressive reading style to emphasize meaning.

· Re-read as needed when your child doesn’t understand something. Answer questions.

· Parents - you can stop reading if your child loses interest. Remember you want listening to a story to be an enjoyable activity he chooses to do, not a forced lesson he resents.

· In the long run, the goal is for students to listen to a story for up to fifteen minutes. That’s a long time in the early months of kindergarten, so be patient. This skill will develop over time.