Tag Archives: rereading

Rereading Books

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photoPreviously, I have written about rereading as a way to figure out tricky words. Rereading is also a powerful way to build comprehension. I recently read a blog post by Vicki Vinton, a writer and literacy consultant in NYC schools. She describes the importance of rereading as a “drafting and revising” process. The first time through a story, readers are figuring out words and getting the feel of a story. Reading that same story a second or third time allows new understandings to unfold. Readers discover details that are significant that they hadn’t noticed before. This comprehension is extremely valuable to developing readers.

You can encourage this by having your child read books two or three times, stopping throughout to discuss “Why” or “How” questions. You can also make comparisons between characters and other stories that you have read together. This will help strengthen their comprehension and model how readers ask these questions before, during, and after reading. Rereading a story is like visiting with an old friend, you may find out things that you never knew before!

Happy reading!

Making It Smooth

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11410888-smooth-road-ahead-good-times-recovery-yellow-street-signStudents have recently learned an important strategy called Making It Smooth. This is a helpful technique which strengthens comprehension and improves fluency. After figuring out a tricky word, a reader should reread the sentence to make the words sound smooth. At this point of the year, students are bravely stretching and looking for chunks, in order to decode unknown words in their stories. However, readers can get so bogged down with stretching that the thread of the story is lost. Making It Smooth encourages readers to reread the sentence, fitting in those newly discovered words and allowing the story to unfold. As you read with your child and he/she successfully figures out a tricky word, nudge him/her to also Make It Smooth.

Happy reading! 🙂

Rereading

Posted on by

Previously, I have written about rereading as a way to figure out tricky words. Rereading is also a powerful way to build comprehension. I recently read a blog post by Vicki Vinton, a writer and literacy consultant in NYC schools. She describes the importance of rereading as a “drafting and revising” process. The first time through a story, readers are figuring out words and getting the feel of a story. Reading that same story a second or third time allows new understandings to unfold. Readers discover details that are significant that they hadn’t noticed before. This comprehension is extremely valuable to developing readers.

You can encourage this comprehension by having your child read books two or three times, stopping throughout to discuss “Why” or “How” questions. You can also make comparisons between characters and other stories that you have read together. This will help strengthen their comprehension and model how readers ask these questions before, during, and after reading. Rereading a story is like visiting with an old friend, you may find out things that you never knew before!

Happy reading!