Reading Goals and Strategies

It was so nice to meet with all of you at parent/teacher conferences! Please feel free to email me if you have any follow-up questions about your child’s reading.

First Grade: Students have learned more useful reading strategies to help when stuck on tricky words. With the strategy, Chunky Monkey, readers look for a chunk or a small word inside a bigger word. Our students are especially looking out for H Brother chunks (th, sh, ch, and wh). Tryin’ Lion is a great strategy as readers reread and “try the line again.” Wise Old Owl is the captain of the strategies, always checking to make sure that the reading makes sense. If it doesn’t make sense, Owl calls on the other strategies to help. Encourage your first grader to tell you about the different strategies and also to identify strategies as they are used. Several books have gone home and should be stored in the Book Boxes. Set aside reading time every night to allow for important practice.

Second Grade: Students have focused on one reading goal in either Comprehension (understanding the reading) or Accuracy (reading the words correctly). By identifying a specific reading goal, students can target that skill to become better readers. Those students who are strengthening Comprehension are reading to remember the details of the story. Books with many people or animals can be confusing, so we are spending time after reading to describe the characters and their actions. Readers who are working on Accuracy are using strategies such as using smaller chunks to figure out longer words or fixing up when their reading doesn’t make sense. Second graders are taking home some great library books at their just right level. Continue to set aside time every night to read and practice these books together.

Happy reading!

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