Ways to Read a Book

During our whole group instruction we have been learning all about the different ways to read a book.

• Read and tell about the pictures
• Read the words
• Retell the story

By teaching the students the three ways to read, more children can feel like real successful readers even if they have a limited amount of decoding skills and sight word recognition.

Read the Pictures
This week the students are practicing the skill of reading the pictures as they "read" our first decodable reader "I Am Picking Apples." The book has no words but has many picture clues that help tell a story. The students are looking at the pictures to see what is happening. Later in the week we are going to make sentences to match the pictures.

Read the Words
This is primarily what most adults think of as reading, At this point in the year I expect the students to begin finding sight words in the books and use picture clues to help with content words. During station time, the students are allowed to use pointers to locate sight words within the sentences in the big books we share. Our new activity that students have started doing is using small sticky notes to underline sight words or words that begin with our target letter.

Retelling a story
This is the last way that students can read a book. During this reading session, the students will tell what happened in the story after reading it more than once. They may pick a few pages to focus on to show a sequence of events. In the case of reading a non fiction book, a student might choose to tell one or two facts they learned from the book.

When your child is reading nightly, ask your child which way they are going to read the book. When students get in the habit of using all 3 ways or reading, they will become more successful readers and will build their reading stamina, and they will be more willing to choose more challenging books.