A Hands-On Approach to E-books

Image courtesy of Ambro at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I’m sure that you have heard that parent involvement affects your child’s of early literacy success and future academic achievement. According to an Edutopia report, parental involvement doesn’t just affect your child, it is the “is the number one predictor.”

So how do parents begin or increase the early literacy foundation? Erika Burton cites research that it takes much more than merely having adult/child reading time or about 100 books throughout the child’s home. And I can attest to this. A life-long reader who has a graduate degree in Literature, I have walls of books and have always read nightly with my boys, yet I have children who struggle with reading. Well, the good news is there is more that we can do with our children to create and strengthen a reading foundation.

Burton outlines that it takes these actions while reading:

• Point to each word on the page as you read (increases tracking skills)
• Read the title and ask your child to make a prediction (increasing previewing and predication skills)
• Take “picture walks” (tells the story before actually reading)
• Model fluency while reading, and bring your own energy and excitement for reading to your child (pitch, intonation and fluctuations)
• Ask your child questions after reading every book (it can range from comprehension to crictual thinking)
• Connect reading and writing if possible.

This is a list that is doable for any busy parent – who is not too busy to make time to read together. And this can done cuddling at bedtime or sitting in front the computer on Big Universe. Young readers and parents can do all of these suggested reading activities online.

You can ask your child to predict what the book is about before reading. A child can use the mouse cursor to track reading words. Picture walks – skimming the book “reading” the visuals aloud are easy and there is the option to read the book again. If you are reading the electronic book to your child, you can add inflection to to your voice – or allow a read-along to do so. You can wrap up reading by doing a Big Universe electronic quiz and adding your own questions, too.

Personally, the biggest challenge from this list is to incorporate writing, but Burton suggests having a child dictate to a parent what to write. She states, “modeling the formation of sentences aligned with the words of a story is crucial for a child to begin making a neural interconnectedness between reading and writing.” One activity that comes to mind is a review of the book. You can ask your child, what did you like about the book? Dislike? Do you think your brother would like to read it? My son would get a kick out of this, as he loves to ask me to write for him.