Each night your child should be reading for at least 10 minutes. Please fill out your child's reading log each night. This can be found and should be keptin his/her yellow folder. It will go to and from school every day. We willbe using this to chart reading progress at school. Thank you for yourcontinued support.
Your child has now begun guided reading. During group s/he learns reading strategies to help strengthen his/her reading skills. We work on building phonics skills, fluency and comprehension. We start with oral responses and discussions and will move to written responses. Please practice reading the books in your child's reading bag each night and remember to return the bag to school every day as your child can not participate in group without his/her bog of books.
In addition, students are expected (even at this young age) to be able to give a long detailed answer to comprehension questions. Ms. Kinnare, a former grade 1 teacher here, has creatively come up with the example – “I need a spaghetti answer!” Although they think it is funny at first the children will come to learn what we mean and give better answers! Eventually, included in each of their bags is a “piece of spaghetti”. Have them use that when they are answering questions with you at home. They should put one end of the spaghetti in each hand. Their hands start together and as they answer the question they SLOWLY stretch out the spaghetti. If their sheets of paper from guided reading come home with a squiggly on the side that means they gave a spaghetti answer (long and detailed)!!!
Here is an example of what we are looking for:
Book: The Three Little Pigs
Question: What is this story mostly about?
Answer – “Pigs” -- Although this is true, it would be considered a very low score.
Answer – “This story is about 3 pigs who leave their mother to go off on their own. They each build their own house and try to stay safe from the big bad wolf.” -- Highest score
Please understand that eventually this is what every first grader in Milford is expected to do! It is difficult for some students to give an answer with this much detail which is why we have come up with the questions for additional support at home as well as the spaghetti strategy (Thanks Ms. Kinnare!).