Did you know that every time you read to your students, you are modeling what they need to be a good reader?? It’s true! All you have to do is think out loud! We teachers call this metacognition! Metacognition is the ability to understand your thought processes, and when we think out loud as we’re reading, we demonstrate our metacognition (our thoughts) to our kiddos or students. This helps them understand how your thoughts are working and what strategies you use when you’re reading!
So that’s all great, but we certainly don’t want to share ALL of our thoughts as we read, do we? Of course we don’t! We just want to share thoughts like:
- Making predictions
- Rereading when we don’t understand something
- Wondering about a picture or the text
- Making connections to your everyday life, yourself, the world, and other stories you might have read
- Talking about the pictures you see in your head while you’re reading
- Figuring out a word we don’t know by looking at the context clues
- Explaining why you are reading expressively
- Thinking about the characters, events, and information in the story
Thinking out loud!
This seems like a lot right? Well since you’re probably not a reading teacher, you will probably need to train your brain to think out loud about these strategies. Start with one, and add a new one once you are comfortable with that one. For me, the easiest one to focus on is unfamiliar words. If that’s you too, start there. Every time you come across a word you think your little one might not know, think about it out loud. Search for the context clues together, and figure it out together. Write (or have your little one write) each word down on a sticky or index card.
Found instrument!
Here’s where the fun part comes in! Once you’ve figured out all the trick words, find a way to enhance your kiddo’s learning by adding a movement for each word, or playing a certain rhythm pattern on an instrument for each word. For example, let’s say we run across the word sneak in our story. I’m sure you can easily think of a movement for this word. Even better, allow your little one to help you come up with a movement. When you come across that word in the story, you and your little one get to stand up and sneak. How about adding an instrument? Well sneaking would probably be fast and soft. You can discuss this together. Choose an instrument that is soft, and allow your kiddo to play it quickly when you get to the word sneak! Don’t have any instruments at home? No problem! Use anything yo have available! A plastic Easter egg filled with rice works great as a shaker! You can use your fingers to scrape the carpet. Have fun being creative!