This week was the culmination of our park unit study, driven by the children's interest in our daily walk to Church Square Park. They discovered acorns on the ground, watched leaves changing color, and listened to birds flying overhead. The most compelling event was watching a squirrel pop out of a hole in a tree just a few feet from us! The children began to bring back to the classroom their special finds.
To read effectively, readers not only decipher words on a page, but also use accumulating knowledge to assess, evaluate, and synthesize the presented information. 1
To support this exploration, I added library stories and non-fiction texts about nature and seasons to our classroom library. During our end-of-day read-aloud time, I began by reading engaging, character-driven fiction on this theme. The children started adding new vocabulary, making predictions, and asking questions during story time as we moved into non-fiction reading. Before school and after snack, the children independently read by looking at engaging illustrations or reviewing a book previously read by a teacher.
At a minimum, to make meaning from text, the reader needs relevant background knowledge related to the text’s vocabulary, topic, and structure. 2
During social times, teachers guided the students' conversations to classroom learning, asking about apple picking trips or pumpkin carving. Through these conversations, we are building knowledge and sharing experiences. We planned thematic-related activities such as songs and rhymes.
Students can now understand and use related vocabulary such as roots, trunk, bark, branches, limbs, stump, shoot, leaves, nuts, and seedpod.
But what can we do at home?
Talk and read a lot in your chosen language at home. When you see that we have a unit of study at school, visit the library to check out books on the same theme. If you speak a language at home that is not English, have conversations where you use the same vocabulary in your home language.
When caregivers speak using the language that best facilitates sharing ideas, telling stories, and having rich dialogue, they are boosting children’s world knowledge, which almost always boosts their ability to read in any language. 3
You can also buy a book from our Amazon Wishlist to add to our Nest library.
1. Catherine Snow and others, Reading for Understanding: Toward an R&D Program in Reading Comprehension, (2002); Frank R. Vellutino and others, “Components of Reading Ability: Multivariate Evidence for a Convergent Skill Model of Reading Development,” (2007).
2. Virginia W. Berninger and Robert D. Abbott, “Listening Comprehension, Oral Expression, Reading, Comprehension and Written Expression: Related Yet Unique Language Systems in Grades 1, 3, 5, and 7,” Journal of Educational Psychology 102 (August 2010); Hugh W. Catts, Suzanne Adlof, and Susan E. Weismer, “Language Deficits in Poor Comprehenders: A Case for the Simple View of Reading,” Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 49 (April 2006); Catherine Snow and Paola Uccelli, “The Challenge of Academic Language,” in The Cambridge Handbook of Literacy, (2009); Jeannette Mancilla-Martinez and Nonie K. Lesaux, “The Gap Between Spanish Speakers’ Word Reading and Word Knowledge: A Longitudinal Study,” Child Development 82 (September 2011).
3. August, D., & Shanahan, T. Developing literacy in second-language learners: Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth. (2006).
