Let’s Talk Books!!!
I think one of the prerequisites of being a teacher is you have to love to read! The same holds true of parents of little kids. Kids love to have a book read to them. It doesn’t start out as a love of literature but a love of having your parents spend this precious time with you. But the precious time quickly turns into a love of reading and all things about books. Let’s face it, even as an adult, there’s nothing better than finishing a good book.
As adults we often join book clubs, or share about what we have read with friends and family. Kids are no different. We spend a lot of time in the classroom sharing about the books that I read to them or that they read to themselves. Here is a list of ideas you can use when having a book discussion with your child while you are reading the story:
- What are you thinking about …
- What did you notice on this page?
- What are you wondering….
- What do you think will happen next?
- What does this remind you?
- I can’t believe that just happened, what did you think was going to happen…
- Why did the character do that, or act that way…
Here are some ideas for discussions after you have finished reading the book:
- What’s the main or big idea? Sounds big but it really is just a one to two sentence statement on what the book was about.
- Who are the characters?
- What happened to the character? And how did they solve their problem in the end of the story?
- What did you learn from the book?
- What was your favorite part of the story? Why?
- Did the story remind you of something in your life? On TV? In another book? On the computer?
- Can you tell me what happened in the story at the beginning? Middle? End?
- If the author wrote or continued this story, what would happen next?
- Pick out some beautiful language or important sentence in the story and ask your child, What did the author mean when he wrote___________________?
- If time has passed by in the story or through several stories in sequels to a book, How could we tell that time had passed by in the story?
- Was the character nice or mean? Good or bad? How could you tell?
- How did the story make you feel?
Most importantly read, and read and read with your child. It is such a great activity and their teacher will thank you for all the wonderful things your child understands about books when they start Kindergarten.