Blog, Week of November 11
My definition for reading: “Reading is interacting with the printed page to make meaning.”
The key word is interacting. And the interaction comes from the children’s own past experiences. Young children need to interact if they are to find meaning. Reading is not a passive act. We must set up connections between the child and the story so they can see its meaning in their own lives.
Remember the “gist”. The gist is how expert readers function. They find the meaning, the key idea. Don’t let your beginning reader get bogged down in the words or sounds. After they check out the sounds take them right back to the meaning.
Some Current Research on How People Learn
Thinking skills are learned in the context of meaningful knowledge, never separate from meaning. Knowledge that goes far beyond the printed words is crucial for comprehension— the images, the connections the scenes in the stories make, the interaction with a caaring, listening adult. Engage the children in discussions pulling from their background knowledge and experiences. This is an important step, helping them to see that they understand by remembering similar situations in their lives, even when the story is highly exaggerated. They particularly love the grand exaggerations.
The ability to monitor how we learn is an essential skill at all ages. Children need to know how they are doing. Does this make sense? What happened to that boy or girl in the story?
I wonder how they feel? How would I feel is this happened to me? Why is this story funny?
Build on children’s informal knowledge, particularly in the early years.
The Day the Relatives Came by Cynthia Rylant
Do you remember being told as a child that some relatives (whom you didn't really recall) were coming to visit? If so, this book will evoke all of the trepidation and excitement of those days . . . not to mention the scattered inconveniences you experienced, that were quickly forgotten in oceans of warm acceptance.
The strength of the book is in its illustrations, which warmly capture emotional closeness, like being tucked into bed by your Mom after a wonderful but tiring day. For those illustrations, The Day the Relatives Came won a Caldecott Honor Award in 1986 that is well deserved.
Does your family have opportunities for extended closeness with relatives? If you don't, hopefully this book will cause you to consider making that happen. That will be one of the finest inheritances you can provide your children, a connection to deep wells of extended family love and acceptance. Book Review, Amazon
The Concept I have chosen: Hospitality is kindness made visible.
Activity 1: Have the child or children remember and tell of a time when they were really welcomed somewhere.
Activity 2: Have the children generate a list of all the stories, or if just one child a list of characteristics of the welcome: big hugs, big smiles, etc.
Activity 3: Teach them the concept of reciprocity. You don’t need to use the word if the child is very young. Just tell them how people love “to give in return” when someone is very kind to them. Have them fold a paper in half and draw a picture of someone being very kind and hospitable to them on one half and then a picture of them doing something kind back to them on the other half. Make your listening important as they tell you about their pictures.
Activity 4: Read the story, The Relatives Came together.
Activity 5: Elicit the pertinent details from the children.
Have the children tell you six things the family did for the relatives: greeted them, hugged them, made room for them, fed them, talked to them, and missed them when they left.
Then have them list six things the relatives did for the family: hugged them, made music, tended the garden, fixed broken things, promised them grapes and peaches, missed them.
Activity 6: Have the children plan and carry out a hospitality event for one or two persons; food, talk, games. Have them draw a picture of what happens.
Activity 7: Have the children write a reflection or share a talk with you about hospitality being kindness made visible.
Activity 8: Together at home as a parent or in school as a teacher, have the child or children create with you “Our Hospitality Rules From Now On.”
