Home Readers

What To Do With Home Readers

We collect 5 home readers on Monday and return them all on Friday.

Choose one book you really like the look of and read that one every night.  Repeated readings of the same book improve your fluency!

Read another book each night as well as your repeated book.

2 x BOOKS EVERY NIGHT!!

Why can't I skip my twenty minutes of reading tonight?

"Why Can't I Skip My Twenty Minutes of Reading Tonight?" Let's figure it out -- mathematically!

• Student A reads 20 minutes five nights of every week.
• Student B reads only 4 minutes a night...or not at all!

Step 1: Multiply minutes a night x 5 times each week.
Student A reads 20 min. x 5 times a week = 100 min./week.
Student B reads 4 minutes x 5 times a week = 20 minutes.Step 2: Multiply minutes a week x 4 weeks each month.
Student A reads 400 minutes a month.
Student B reads 80 minutes a month.

Step 3: Multiply minutes a month x 9 months/school year.
Student A reads 3600 min. in a school year.
Student B reads 720 min. in a school year.
Student A practices reading the equivalent of ten whole school days a year.
Student B gets the equivalent of only two school days of reading practice.

By the end of 6th grade if Student A and Student B maintain these same
reading habits, Student A will have read the equivalent of 60 whole school
days Student B will have read the equivalent of only 12 school days.
One would expect the gap of information retained will have widened
considerably and so, undoubtedly, will school performance. How do you think
Student B will feel about him/herself as a student?

Some questions to ponder:

• Which student would you expect to read better?
• Which student would you expect to know more?
• Which student would you expect to write better?
• Which student would you expect to have a better vocabulary?
• Which student would you expect to be more successful in school ... and in life?

Here are some ideas for how to use Home Readers effectively with your child.

Recalling Events

1. What is the title of the text?  (Point to the title on the cover and the title page inside the cover)
2. Can you retell me the main parts of the story?
3. Who were the main characters?  Did they do things they would normally do in real life?
4. Where was the story set?

What is the Purpose?

1. Who wrote this text / book?  (Point to author’s name on front cover) 
2. Why do you think they wrote this book?  (To teach people, to make people laugh etc…)
3. Who would read this book?  (Children, Adults, Babies)
4. Did you learn anything new from tis book?
5. What did you learn?

Relating to your own experiences

1. Have you ever been to a place like the one in the story?
2. Have you ever met a person or animal like the one found in the story?
3. Have you read or watched a story like this one before?
4. Would you like to do something that happened in the story?  Why?

Predicting

QUESTIONS 1&2 NEED TO BE ASKED BEFORE AND DURING THE READING OF TEXT

1. What do you think the story might be about?  (Look at the front cover and title)
2. What do you think might happen because of this?  (Choose an event during the story)
3. How else could the story have ended?  (Talk about different ways the story could have ended)

Searching the Text

1. Were there any groups of words that kept being repeated during the text?  What were they?
2. Did you read any new words?  How did you work out how to read them?  (Sounded them out, used the picture clues)
3. Were there any words that you thought were really tricky?
4. Were there any words written differently to others?  Why do you think they were written this way?  (wiggly or thicker, bigger or smaller)

Looking at Pictures

1. Who illustrated / photographed this text?  (Point out the illustrator’s / photographer’s name on front cover)
2. What colours can you see in the pictures?  Are they bright / dark?
3. Why do you think they chose these colours)  (If it is a scary story the colours might be dark etc…)
4. Choose a particular page in the book.  Why do you think the picture is next to this text (writing)? What other picture or photograph could be placed on this page?
5. Is the background the same in any of the pictures?

Punctuation

1. Count how many full stops there are in the text.
2. Count how many capital letters there are in the text.
3. Count how many sentences there are in the text.
4. Find out if there are any question marks or exclamation marks in the text.