Begin by looking at the front cover and reading the title of the book. Discuss with your child what they think the book might be about (prediction).

 

When reading with your child remember to start with a picture walk by looking at each picture on every page in sequence but NOT reading the text the first time through. Stop and talk about each picture. The first time you read the story with your child, after the picture walk you want to do so as smoothly as possible. You may want to therefore read the story to your child first so that they can focus on the concepts in the story rather than struggling with each word on the page. After reading through the book, ask questions such as, "Did we guess from the pictures what the story was about?" "What did we guess right?" "What did we guess wrong?" 

 

With your child start the first read aloud by echo reading. This is where you read a sentence (or portion of a sentence if it is long) and your child repeats what they heard you read. It is important that your child be looking at the words on the page and following with their finger both when you read aloud and when they repeat (or echo) back. You want to develop in your child an understanding that reading is fluent (the way we speak) and not choppy or staggered. Most children when they first learn to develop their reading skills will read in a staccato voice, stumbling over knew words and searching their memory for the right sounds. This is to be expected but Echo Reading will help to develop fluent reading through modeling.

 

Once your child has an understanding of the story content let them read it aloud to you. Or share the reading. They read one page or one sentence and then you read one page or one sentence and so on. As your child encounters difficulty on decoding words, work on skills such as sounding out the words by observing the beginning consonants and consonant blends, the vowel inclusions and the end consonants, this is referred to as word-chunking, talk about the meaning of some words but do not belabour the process and have your child point out in the illustrations some of the story content.

 

Consider mastery of a book/story when your child can independently read from the start to the end fluently and with no errors. This often takes between 7 to 12 times of reading through the book/story using all of the processes described above. 

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Once you are confident that your child has reached a fluent ease with the story then work on understanding your child's comprehension of what they have read. Ask a number of open ended questions that require detailed answers instead of just, "Yes" or "No" responses. Such as, "What was the story about?" (comprehension). "What happened at the beginning, middle, and end?" (sequencing). Ask about the written features of the story with questions such as, "Who were the characters?" (character details). "Where did the story take place?" (setting). "What was the problem, danger, or trouble in the story?" (conflict). And, "How did the problem get solved?" (solution).

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