Many parents know the importance of reading in English, but knowing does not mean knowing how to tutor. In this regard, many schools in the United States have a mature reading guidance program, which solves many confusions of parents, such as how to allocate reading time, how to match the difficulty of books, and how to balance different types of books. Just say not practice fake style, we must exercise children's reading ability, and practice can be effective.
This article is reproduced from the public number: East-West Children's Education (ID: eastwest_edu)
Wen 丨 Fugitive Mother Editor丨 May
Hello everyone, I'm a runaway mother. A few days ago, I went to the newly built library near my home to pick up a few books I ordered, and I walked around by the way, and I was quite emotional.
The new library is much larger than the old one and looks like a large warehouse at first glance.
The sense of science and technology is stronger, and a large dinosaur skeleton in the center overlooks the small and studious human being.
There are plenty of free reading areas where children can sit and read or hide in this small tent with their parents.
There are also some STEAM areas, board game areas, robot areas, etc., you can take a break if you are tired of reading.
Don't look at the photo, there are not many people, but I seriously found the angle.
Our small city has a total population of more than 100,000, and at about three o'clock in the afternoon on a school day, it should have been the time to pick up the baby from school and go to the major extracurricular classes, and at least 2% of them were here.
Standing upstairs and looking down, looking at the crooked sofa, lying on the ground, sitting on the steps, immersed in the sea of books, and parents accompanying them, either working in front of the computer, or also reading...
Suddenly there was a feeling that what "chicken baby" can be higher than allowing children to spend a large period of time every day, freely staying in the stacks of books, reading openly, and absorbing to their heart's content?
I walked around the children's area a few times and saw a lot of familiar books that I had read as a child. I also remember a lot of his reading experience in the library and school when he was in elementary school.
Let's talk to you about reading today.
In other words, Lao Mei really does not attach great importance to reading, and "reading" is far more than just "reading". There is quite a lot to learn from.
Save the best time of the day for reading
I remember when I was in elementary school, classes started at 7:45 a.m. every day and ended at 3:00 p.m., except for classes once or twice a week such as art, music, and physical education, other times were roughly arranged like this:
In the morning in the language teacher's class, learn spelling, grammar, reading;
In the afternoon, in the math teacher's class, I learn mathematics, science, computer and so on.
At a parent-teacher meeting, the teacher shared a more detailed class schedule with me, and I found out that they spent the first hour and a half from the first morning to 9 o'clock reading.
Unlike the "reading comprehension" class we usually imagine, during this time, not everyone reads the same article, and then analyzes the main idea, discusses the author's ideas and ideas, that is, it is more pure reading, and the children are not reading the same book.
The classroom is posted with the approximate schedule of reading lessons, and the top two small sections, Share (sharing with each other) and Mini-lesson (teachers explaining reading methods, strategies, etc.), both of which account for a small proportion.
The bulk of the section is "Independent Reading" below.
Teachers have explained to parents the reason for this arrangement, that is, to use the precious time that children have energy and active thinking in the morning to read quietly and think independently.
Although each school and each child's schedule is different, I think this idea is completely referential. In the time that the child can control, give priority to the "golden time" of the day for reading, first occupy the reading time, and then arrange the rest.
What books to read, there is a lot of attention
Like me, many parents like to divide books into fiction (storybooks) and non-fiction (non-storybooks), and usually pay attention to balancing their children's book choices.
But in fact, this classification is still very crude and far from enough.
At the beginning of each semester, when doing a reading plan, the teacher will give the children a classification card of the book, which is divided into details:
For example, the same is Fiction, there are Realistic Fiction, Historical Fiction, Traditional Literature, Fantasy, Science Fiction, and so on;
The same is Non-Fiction, there are Biography/Autobiographic biography, Memoir autobiography, Informational popular science information and so on.
You can also take a look at it and test yourself whether your child's usual reading is "nutritionally balanced"?
Does Fiction read a lot of campus literature, historical novels, and famous books, but less science fiction?
Does Non-Fiction read a lot of popular science, but ignore biographies and autobiographies?
The fugitive teacher requires the children to dabble in each type, such as this is a requirement for a semester in the fourth grade:
Counting the books, there are already 22 books. Moreover, the books of fourth-grade children are not the kind of picture books with more pictures and fewer words, and the bibliography in the classroom book corner has a certain thickness, think that if you do not allocate so much time to read every day, it is estimated that you will not be able to complete the task in a year.
As mentioned earlier, the reading time is different for each child, so how to choose a book?
First of all, the teacher will put the reading level suitable for the children in the classroom book corner, and cover all the above categories, and update them regularly.
For children, in addition to checking the difficulty with the "5 Finger Rule calligraphy" I shared before, it is more important to meet their own interests, but how do you know if you like or dislike such a thick book, and whether you are interested or not?
Five finger selection calligraphy:
Open the book and read a random page,
If you don't know 1 word, this book is too simple for you.
If you don't know 2-3 words, the difficulty is just right.
If you don't know 3-4 words, it means that it is a bit difficult, but you can try it.
If you don't know more than 5 words, it means that it is too difficult, save it and read it later.
So there is a "Share" sharing session in their reading class, in this link, each child can share the book they have read, let other students have a better understanding of it, as a choice reference, how to share, we will talk in detail immediately.
"Reading" is ultimately about "thinking"
"Reading is ultimately about thinking", I was very impressed by the teacher's words.
In order to achieve this goal, teachers in reading classes use a variety of methods and tools to inspire and help children think independently.
For example, for story fiction books, children need to use such a Story Map story map to organize reading ideas, record the title of the book, the author, the scene where the story occurs, the main characters, what problems are encountered, what happened, how the problem is finally solved, what is the conclusion, and so on.
For non-fiction non-story books, use a variety of mind maps and concept maps to organize and analyze the content in the book and your own ideas.
For example, use a tree diagram to organize the paragraph outline of the entire book; Use bubble charts to analyze the character's personality traits; Use flowcharts to clarify the sequence of events; Use Venn Venn diagrams to analyze the similarities and differences of things.....
These tools can help children record and express their reading results, and then, on this basis, they can easily communicate and share with classmates and teachers.
There are two ways to share:
One is Book Talk, which is to prepare a short speech, tell the rest of the class what is good about this book, why it is worth choosing, and what you can gain after reading, similar to the teaser video we usually watch movies, advertise the book you have seen, and see how many students will be moved by it.
The other is to write, write a letter to your friends, classmates, teachers, and likewise, tell them what book you are reading, how you feel, and if so, how is it good? Is it the twists and turns of the storyline, or the author's writing style that attracts you, whether it is worth recommending to others, etc.
For example, the following is a letter written by his teacher who escaped to the effect that he was reading "The Enemy Above", because his friend Sai highly recommended it to him, saying that it was a very tragic story (really two children who like to abuse their hearts ~~), and then he introduced the story of Anton, the most important character in the book, and explained why he liked this book...
You find that no, in these practices, the teacher has completely pulled the children's "reading", "speaking" and "writing", which is a comprehensive ability cultivation.
I remember that the teacher also emphasized that if you do not express the thoughts and thinking when reading, others cannot gain insight and cannot help children dig deep and improve, so speaking and writing are often combined with reading, because to say to write, children will be more motivated to think more and have a sense of achievement in the process of reading.
But then again, I think a lot of what can be done in American schools has a lot to do with their teacher-student ratio, when they skip elementary school, there are less than 20 children in the class, so the teacher can let them read different books, discuss with them one by one, or let the children exchange what they think after reading. If you change to 1 vs 30~40 children, it may be difficult to do it.
This has to rely on our family education to make up, as long as the parents are powerful enough, with the help of some reading aids, the effect will definitely not be bad. If you are interested in this aspect, I will dig into more details next time.
After escaping to middle school, he was very busy with homework and extracurricular activities, and he rarely had time to go to the library.
I miss the good times when I went to the library all day long without knowing what to do.
Fortunately, in fact, children's reading interest and reading habits can be cultivated by their own preferences, which is the years of elementary school. In the back, after the study of various subjects became tense, there were some "utilitarian" factors in which to play and what to read.
So, families with elementary school babies, if you want to "chicken", read more "chicken"!