For Reading Out Loud! What To Do with Reading Homework

It’s been written that throughout Abraham Lincoln’s life, even in the White House, he would lay on his back on the floor with his feet propped up onto a chair and read out loud to no one in particular.  When asked why he would do this he would say, matter-of-factly, “I get it two ways.  I see it with my eyes and hear it in the ears.”  This is a great strategy for 2^nd Graders to develop reading skills—reading out loud, that is, not necessarily on the floor.

Reading Homework—homework in which your child has to read a story—is just a little bit more complicated than what Mr. Lincoln was doing.  The basic premise is that your kid opens the book and reads.   As your child moves into a growing independent reader there are some little things you can do to help them at home.

To improve reading fluency we need to practice, practice, practice.  And as Michael Jordan used to say, “It’s not practice that makes perfect it’s perfect practice that makes perfect.”

In order to help your child practice reading more smoothly (fluently), follow these simple strategies:

1    Echo Read—Read a sentence and have your child read it back to you. You can also read short paragraphs in the same way.  Do this for the entire story.  Great modeling is the key here, so pause at punctuation marks and show inflection in your voice—make your reading sound like you’re talking to a friend. *

2.     Choral Reading—You and your child read a sentence or sentences together. 

3.     Reverse Echo Reading—once they have practiced the story, allow them to read to you and you read back to them. 

4.     Child Read Aloud—have your child read the story to you aloud.  If they make a mistake or need help blending the sounds of the word (sounding it out) 1) guide them to read the beginning, middle or ending letter sounds of the word, 2) name a rhyming word of the word they’re stuck on, or 3) give a clue to the challenging word’s meaning.  It’s important to have them reread the sentence from the beginning so that they can move past the word that gave them trouble.

*NOTE: Keep in mind that Reading Fast is not Fluent Reading. While speed is a factor in developing fluency, punctuation is key to understanding the text. 

You can Mix and Match any of the strategies throughout the story.  You can try a different strategy on each page.  

This is a process that takes time.  It may take your child a week to read some of our selections fluently.  But if you take the time to vary the routines of reading out loud, you will see more improvements in reading fluency and comprehension in your young reader this year than you could have ever imagined.   

Finally, there are two major goals to focus on when reading our story out loud at home: Reading Fluency and Reading Comprehension.  Improving reading fluency allows a reader to focus on understanding the story rather than just “sounding out” the words.  Fluent readers develop comprehension, or understanding of the text, better than readers who must read and decode one word at a time.  However, no matter what your child’s reading fluency ability is, repeatedly reading the story out loud is a great approach to getting it two ways.