Decoding Strategies:
Sample sentence: The bear climbed to the top of the tree to find the fruit.
-What is the beginning sound? C-C-Cl. The bear cl-cl-cl…
-Check the picture. What is the bear doing?
-Skip it and go back (context clues). The bear…. to the top of the tree. What did he do?
-Similar words. Does this look like another word you know?
-Sound it out. Cover up part of the word to isolate one sound at a time. Cl-cl-cl-iiiiii-mmmmm-ddddd

**A note about working on decoding strategies: Reading words should never be isolated from comprehension. Reading is meaning. If you’re struggling through each word and not discussing the book, you might end up disliking the process. Try to find books that are slightly challenging, but enjoyable. Make sure you incorporate discussion every time.

Comprehension Strategies:
-Make connections: Relate what happens in the book to your own life, or in another book.
-Predict: What do you think is going to happen next?
-Make inferences: Why do you think she was so angry?
-Question/Wonder: I wonder why he did that…. What’s the matter with the baby?
-Visualize: What picture do you see in your head when I read this part?
-Text Structure: Point out titles/headings/picture captions.

Comprehension strategies based on Making Meaning reading program.

Tell Stories
We know that talking to children is one of the best things you can do for their development.  Incorporate story telling into that talk. Some parents like to remember the day as a part of the night-time routine. Use details and rich language when you tell stories. This will help them when they begin to write.

Draw Pictures
Instead of drawing a “scene” (the house, the sun, the flowers), try drawing events. Draw the day at the park: the swings, the kids, the dog, the fall. Use details from real experiences… the clouds, the rain, the wet hair, the umbrella. Have your toddler “read” the drawing to you.

Phonics Fun
It is important that your toddler learn the names of letters, but try moving beyond that and working on the letter sounds. It’s difficult for little ears to hear all the different sounds in a word, so practice s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g words out.  “B-b-b-b-aaaaa-llllll. What other words start with the b-b-b-b sound? Right! b-b-b-b-bear.” “Mmmmmmm-aaaa-mmmmm-aaaa. Just like mmmmm-mouse.” Try to get in the habit of making the sound whenever you’re talking about a letter.

Make a Letter-Sounds Book
Fold a piece of construction paper over blank typing paper and staple the “spine”. Write each letter of the alphabet on its own page.  Get a pack of stickers and work on putting them on their sound page. “Here is a kite! Let’s find the k-k-k-k page. Here it is…. with k-k-kitchen.”

Also see the post about making books with toddlers.

Methods of Communication
The way in which you attempt to talk to the teacher matters. Don’t try to initiate a conversation before or during class – even if they act gracious, that’s a very difficult time to talk. Try writing a note, sending an email or calling. Realize also that schools are often inefficient – sometimes voice mail doesn’t work or the email server is down. Be patient.

Build Rapport
Talking to parents can be scary. Try to build some rapport before you raise any concerns. Compliment the positive and ask how you can help. If you come out of the gates with accusations or criticism, you’ll get nowhere. School administrators support and protect their teachers. If you can build a positive relationship with the teacher, you’ll have much more leverage.

Bringing up a Concern
It’s almost always better to find out some more information before you raise concerns with the teacher or administrator.  For example, maybe you’re concerned because your child was assigned detention or some other discipline action. Your first course of action should be understanding the discipline system. What were the steps taken before the detention (and were you alerted at that point?). What is the child’s behavior history?  Sometimes the parents aren’t involved until the last, most serious consequences and they are very surprised. If you want to be more closely involved, set up a system with the teacher for frequent communication. The same is true for many academic concerns. If your child receives a lower grade than you expect, find out more about the curriculum. Do you know what grade-level work looks like? Should a second grader be able to read “chapter books”? Should a kindergartner be able to write paragraphs? Teachers should give you this information, but if they don’t you’ll have to ask. 

Test Scores
Test scores tell you one thing: how the other kids in this school do on standardized tests. The problem with choosing a school based on test scores alone is that you’re actually choosing a school based on demographics.  High income students score higher on these tests. Low income students score lower (see the research). If you see this direct relationship, you can’t infer anything about the teaching or learning going on at this school. However, if you see a school with a high percentage of low-income students (those who receive free or reduced lunch) and above average test scores, you can infer that there is something special about this school. Conversely, if you see a school with very few low-income students and below average test scores, you can infer that the school has some problems with teaching and learning.

Diversity
Percentages of students from various ethnic backgrounds is public information. If diversity is important to you, find out. If you notice that the school has a high percentages of Hispanic students, this could mean that there are many kids who speak Spanish as their first language.  Find out what the district’s policy is regarding Spanish instruction. In some districts, there is no Spanish instruction (English immersion). In other districts, students gradually move from all-Spanish to all-English instruction over several years.

Programs
Maybe you’re looking for a really great art program or a huge computer lab or after school sports. Some schools have full or part day pre-school (also called ECE- Early Childhood Education) or academic tutoring.  Ask about what’s available.

Teachers
In my opinion, high-quality teaching is far and away the most important factor. It doesn’t matter if a school has a shiny new playground and a friendly principal if your child’s teacher is struggling. So, good schools have good teachers, right? Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.  Schools with high percentages of low-income students usually have less experienced teachers.  And experienced teachers are often better than new teachers, but not always.  Consider this: high poverty schools (with lower test scores) face a great deal of pressure to improve.  Teachers in these schools work very hard and they receive a ton of professional development.  When I was working as a literacy coach, teachers and principals came from all over the district to observe our expert teachers — in the lowest performing school in the state.  Conversely, high-income students tend to score well on standardized tests.  Teachers in these schools have very little pressure to perform.  That doesn’t mean that good schools have bad teachers (or that bad schools have good teachers); there is probably a little of each.  So, why don’t good principals just get rid of the struggling teachers? This is actually a very complex question, but the short answer is: the teachers’ union makes that very difficult.

So, What Do I Do??
Instead of looking around for a “good school”, think about what that means to you. For me, I want a school close by with decent diversity and some after school programs. I’ll talk to some other parents and listen to what they say about particular teachers. If the principal allows it, I would request a specific teacher.  At the end of the day, the best you can do is choose a place that feels comfortable to you. If your child ends up in a classroom with a struggling teacher, ask to switch… it’s worth it.

Remember the Goal
The best thing you can do for your child is foster a love of reading. They don’t have to be a fluent reader in order to comprehend a book. When you sit down to read with your child, try to make it fun.

Challenge, but Don’t Frustrate
When a child is reading alone, it’s important that the text is appropriate for their reading skill.  When you’re reading together, you can choose any book at any level – as long as it’s interesting to the child. You will support more or less depending on the difficulty.  When they come to a word they don’t know, give them a clue (“look at the picture” or “It starts with C, just like your name”). If they don’t get it, move on. If the child gets frustrated, the fun is over.

Focus on Comprehension
Talk about what’s happening in the book. Talk about the pictures. Make connections to the child’s life. Make connections to other books.  You’re conveying the message that reading is not just about sounding out words.  Reading makes you think and makes you laugh. When you’re talking about a book, the most open-ended questions are the ones that make kids think the most (they are also the most difficult). For example, you might simply say, “What are you thinking?”. If that’s enough to get them talking, great. If you get a blank stare, you’ll have to get a bit more specific, “What did you think about Charlie?” and then, “Why did Charlie want to go to the toy store?”. You can progress like this until you get some conversation going, but always try to get back to those open-ended questions.  Sometimes the child is thinking about something that may never have occured to you.

Additional Resources:
US Department of Education
KidsReads.com
Carol Hurst

Make Books
Take a piece of construction paper, fold it in half and staple some copy paper inside. With young kids, you can “write” the story with illustrations first; this helps them follow along. See my post about making books with pre-schoolers. If the kid is doing the writing, don’t spend too much time getting it perfect. The emphasis is on the creative process, not the spelling or handwriting. Older kids will have fun making their own illustrations. These books become a part of your library and kids love to read them over and over again. 

Choose Non-Fiction
Kids tend to get stuck on the autobiographical “About Me” books (What I Want to be When I Grow Up, My Family, etc.). Help them get past this by realizing that everyday things are book-worthy. When they get the hang of writing about things that really happened, there is never a shortage of material.

Write Small
Beware the “My Summer Vacation” story. The subject is way too big to be interesting. It will inevitably sound like a laundry list of events (First, we flew on the plane, then we went to the hotel. We went to the beach and built a sandcastle…). Instead, help them choose one, much smaller event – maybe just the airplane. The details will make the story colorful (I ate two tiny bags of peanuts and drank a cup of tomato juice…).

Write Often
Don’t wait for something special to happen. Write about walking to the park, baking a cake, getting a haircut, visiting a friend…

Additional Resources:
US Department of Education

The concept can be described in three steps:
1 – What I think, I can say.
2 – What I say can be written.
3- What is written can be read.

I’ll use an example of a book I made with my two-year old to describe the process. The first step is to recognize when something book-worthy is happening.  Carson and I were cutting open a pumpkin in order to fill it with applesauce and bake it when I realized this would make a good book. So, I talked a lot about what we were doing. “I’m cutting the pumpkin with a knife”, “Let’s scrape the seeds out with spoon” and “Good job – you scraped the seeds out with a spoon”. It’s also nice if you can take a picture. Remembering details is sometimes tricky with a toddler, so the photo helps jog the memory.

Later that day, I helped Carson tell his dad about the pumpkin. I showed him the picture and he was able to remember some of the details. I thought it was a good time to make a book. The trick here is to work quickly. We grabbed a piece of construction paper and 3 sheets of copy paper, folded them in half and stapled them.

The title of the book always has his name in it. In this case, “Carson and Mommy Cooked a Pumpkin”. We’re working on that first step in the concept of literacy, (What I think, I can say). I try to get a coherent sentence from Carson. “What did we do with the pumpkin? How did we open it?” As we are working through the sentence, I am drawing a picture. When I say picture, I mean stick-figures and barely recognizable objects. As soon as we get something that makes sense, we move on to the second step (What I say can be written). “OK, I’m writing your sentence: Mommy cut the pumpkin with a knife”. You’ll have to work as fast as the attention span of the kiddo. For me, that’s about 10 seconds per page and 4 total pages. When the book is done, you read it together (step 3 – what is written can be read).  

We read the “Carson books” all the time. I encourage him to “read” it and he loves it.

A couple of tips about making books:
  – non-fiction and narrative (real life stories are the best practice)
  – choose small topics (“my summer vacation” is way to big to be interesting)
  – work quickly (keep their attention)
  – re-read often (point to the words while you read)

If you are not artistically inclined and worried about your illustrations (I have a hard time differentiating my stick figures), try this:
www.moo.com
You can upload pictures and have them printed on stickers. That way, you can give your stick figures a real face.