Nightly Reading Homework: Best Practices for Parents

At my school, we assign nightly reading in every grade

K-8. I came across this video blog by Jenifer Gonzalez geared towards parents. It was interesting to me because often I have parents questioning the point to nightly reading and that it is a burden and a waste of time at home...This blog really spelled it out for me and now I now how to respond to parents as to why nightly reading is so important and effective strategies they can use to guide their child to being lifelong reader:

1. Sit side by side with your child while they read. The point of this homework is to have an adult reading along with the child to guide her along the way.

2. Don't tell the words. She will need to spend time decoding the words on her own. Just wait quietly- giving her some time to figure a word out.

3. Move beyond "sound it out." Just trying to sound out a word letter by letter is not the most effect way to figure out a word. One strategy to use is to tell her to think about similar words. Chunking is another strategy. Chunking is breaking a word down by bigger chunks in order to decode the word. Allow your child to use the pictures to help her figure out what she is reading. Pictures are important tools to guide a child to comprehending a story.

4. Have your child re-read some passages for fluency. If your child is merely sounding out word for word then she will not understand the sentence in its entirety. They need to be read smoothly. If your child takes a long time to decode a sentence, have her go back and re-read it a few times so she understand. Be careful to not overdo it!

5. Allow mistakes to go uncorrected. It's not necessary to correct every single mistake your child makes.

6. Allow your child to read the same book multiple times.

7. Keep reading to your child. By continuing to read to your child you model correct pacing, reading with expression and a love of books that will create a lifelong reader.