Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Raising a Reader!



If you believe that teaching your child to read and helping your child develop proficient reading skills is the key to success in life, and if you wish to help your children develop to their fullest potential... then your must read this message carefully. 

READ! READ! READ! READ! The best thing that you could do for your child is read to them daily. Teaching your child to love to read will payoff in the long run. As a Reading Coach, my job is to provide teacher with support and professionally development in literacy. My job is to grow teachers professionally. However, the biggest lesson I've learned about literacy was when I had my daughter. I knew that reading to my child was important. To my surprise I began to see the payoff earlier than I could have ever imagined. At one years old, Ari knew concept of prints. She understood that a reader read a book left to right, she could identify the front & back cover, where the authors name could be found and that the book had words and that readers read with intonation. At two, she began retelling her favorite books and even began to pretend as though she was reading the book. Now at 2 1/2 she already can recognize 17 letters and 5 letter sounds and recognizes all of the letters in her name. Let me remind you that she is 2! The craziest part is that I did not do any magical program, or worked with her non stop (she doesn't like it when I try to teach her anything) we just simply read to her every night no matter what. Even my husband who is not a big fan of reading reads to her about 3 books a night.  So the big secret for literacy success is the exposure to books early on. 


I even began to take little Ari to the public library. The library has a section of board books and she loves to pick out books to read. She even has that system down packed, where she know exactly where to return the books and where to check them out. I love to see her excitement for books! Many people assume that she is capable of doing so much because her mom is a reading coach but in reality I do not do anything extra I promise. I just read daily and make sure that she is expose to as many books as possible. This is the best thing you can do for your kids and it's absolutely free! 

Happy Reading! 


Little Ari reading to me!