Elementary Readers: Building a Strong Foundation | S.16 Ep.4

Shared reading routines, accurate word reading, writing integration, and selecting engaging texts all play a key role in developing strong reading skills during the early school years.

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Welcome to The Science of Parenting Podcast, where we connect you with research-based information that fits your family. We'll talk about the realities of being a parent and how research can help guide our parenting decisions. I'm Mackenzie DeJong-Schelling, a podcast co-host and parenting educator. Hi everyone and I'm Dr. Connie Beecher, your co-host for this season in literacy. I'm a literacy educator and parent of two grownups. There was a little bit of denial in there. I know it's just I'm a little bit in denial. Sorry. Oh, we are so excited to have everyone back this episode, and our season around literacy, all around literacy, which is why we have Connie with us. This season is dedicated to helping parents support their children's reading journey. We know that parents are a child's first and most influential teacher, especially when it comes to reading. So, in this season, we've explored the importance of talking and reading with our children from that very, very early age. And this week we are talking about getting into elementary school. So, would you give us an idea of what parents and caregivers should be focused on at this age? So, as we get into elementary school, you might remember from our first episode on foundations we talked about the important third-grade milestone and how we start learning to read in those early grades. Our task is really decoding written language. And then we're going to make the transition to now taking our reading to learn new things. Right. Learning to read to reading to learn. So in elementary, we're going to get through that whole, developmental progression. And it's a really wide range. Right. Yeah. I mean, we're starting kindergarten to fifth graders. That's quite a change. So we'll talk. We're going to continue to talk about creating that reading routine. Now, we're going to add supporting accurate word reading. Okay. We'll talk more about writing specifically. And then again, still talking about selecting books, because that's kind of our favorite. Right. Right. Yes. So, let's get started with that idea of creating a structured reading environment. We've already touched on this a little bit, but can we refresh what that looks like? Yeah. So we've talked about, you know, creating that routine with kids around reading. And really it provides predictability and a time to focus on the task of reading. We really want that consistent, interrupted time. And in elementary, we're talking about, you know, anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes a day, depending on your child's age and attention span. And again, I want to emphasize this is just for reading. It's not about doing any kind of other homework. So just that reading and focusing on that consistency. Right? We also want to find a comfortable, distraction-free space for reading for our children. Maybe a cozy corner, a favorite chair, a quiet spot on the floor. I know that, for Christmas, one of my nephews got a beanbag for his room, which is an awesome spot for him to focus in on reading, minimize those distractions, and create an atmosphere for concentration around reading. Yeah, you know, and really, there's emotional benefits too. That routine, you know, can help reduce anxiety and have positive expectations about reading. And again, I do want to say it's still a shared time. So, we still want to be involved in that. Right, right. That shared time separate from other activities. And we know that we've been reading with our children previously, but typically, before this point has been the adult reading to the child. And we're moving into that age where maybe our kiddos start to be involved in doing more of the reading. They're reading it back to us as the parents or the caregivers or to the teachers in the classroom or the folks that are around them. So tell us more about, kind of that flip. Right, so we've been starting, as you said, shared reading together where we're modeling that fluent reading for them. And now children are going to start to take a turn, and they're going to be doing some reading to us. Sometimes, it's hard to remember, but adults sort of just regularly read silently. But children actually can't do that in the beginning. They have to read it out loud. And so this is a time where I'll, I'll be reading out loud, which again, creating that distraction free time is really great for them. So important. And that reading out loud is a fundamental skill that children use as then they develop those language and reading capacities. Right, and this can look like a lot of different things. So you can take turns reading pages of books. Depending on your child's level, you could read the page, and then they could repeat the page. Remember last time we talked about using your finger under the text. Read along. Were still doing that, and then you want to prompt your child to do that, too. So again, we're just drawing their attention to that text on the page. And then, you know, listening to them read. Still talking about what you're reading and then helping them with any words that they missed or that they're struggling with. So, talking about those missed read words, how can we assist? We want to talk about supporting. Assisting. Getting to that accurate word reading. What should a parent do if a child does misread a word, because we know that absolutely can, and will, happen, right? Yeah. So when your child's reading, we really want them to focus on sounding out words. And so, depending on how old you are and how your school did that right, you may or may not be familiar with it. At different times in the past, people have used more context where we might look at pictures, but we really want to focus your child's attention on print. So, in fact, you might have heard the term science of reading. Okay. So this is something that is talking about a research-based way to teach reading, right? We have science of parenting. There's science of reading, right? And it's even been introduced into legislation. So it's law in Iowa that we will use the science of reading. And really, again, we're talking about explicit teaching of phonics. So you remember phonics from school. That's the letter and sounds. So, really making sure that kids know that in order to read, you have to be able to know those letter sounds and sound words out. So, do you have examples of like what that might look like talking about letter sound errors, vowels, those sorts of things? Yeah, you're going to have to pull out that remember those knowledges from your early reading days. So one of the things that makes English a little more complicated to learn to read is we have 26 alphabet letters, but we have 44 phonemes. Goodness gracious So those are sounds that we use in the word. So that means, right, we have lots of tricky things. Like sometimes two letters only make one sound together. Sometimes, letters don't even make a sound. So we have all of these things. But they, you know, they're rules that can be learned. And again, focusing on the print. So, for example, if we’re looking at this book, I'm showing a picture of a barn. And there's a sentence about the barn, and then there's a sentence that says she braces her beams. And so if I were looking at the picture, I might try to say barn there. Right. Because there's a picture of a barn, and it starts with a B. Yep. But that wouldn't be correct. We just want to again focus attention on the print. And so you just break those parts down. So if we were looking at the word braces br...a...ces. and you just model that breaking it apart, putting it back together. Braces. Braces is a good example because it has a C and an S that both make the sound S. And an E that you don't... And an E that doesn't that doesn’t say anything, right? So but, there's reasons for that. These are like consonant vowel consonant patterns that kids learn in school, and as your child's learning those, your teacher is probably sharing them with you. Like what they're, right. The kinds of things that they're learning. And so, but as the parent, I'm not asking you to become an expert on teaching phonics. Right? Right. So but, just model slowly breaking those words apart and then putting them back together. If they get to a point where there's a word that they're really struggling with or they really get frustrated with, do you just let them struggle, or how would you approach that? You know, honestly, if it's an odd word that has unusual spelling, thinking of the word neighborhood, you just give it to them, because, again, your job as the parent you're there to support, we're getting some practice, and we're having this, you know, bonding time together. We don't want to make it, you know, to be, like, too hard or a negative thing. Yeah. That makes sense. So we've talked about how we can use, like sounding things out to help with reading. Is sounding words out something that parents can also use to support writing at home? What about writing? Is that something that we can help with? Yeah, so writing is the flip side of reading, in a way, right? And, writing is something that well kids can read the word before they can write the word. We said that in preschool. So that's still the case. But now, as we're getting into writing, it's interesting because a lot of families we know from research know about reading with kids at home, and they do that. Less often do families think about writing at home. Things that they could do about writing as much. So we know kids sort of go through phases. Just like there are phases in reading, there are phases of writing. Yes. And there's two different types of writers, right? So we have the emergent writers, which are the like pre-K first grade, and then the early writers a little bit after that. Can you tell us what the difference between an emergent writer and an early writer are? So as kids are emergent writers, they understand that it's the squiggles on the page that are saying things, right? And so what you'll see is they'll start to make what we call letter-like forms. There maybe not absolutely complete words. They're just sort of putting down what they sort of remember words look like. Sure, yeah. There might not be spaces, but they probably have an idea of what they want to say. So this would be like you're sitting down and they're coloring something for you. And they made a picture. And you can ask them about the picture and they can tell you something. Right. So like maybe it's a picture of their dog. I took my dog outside. But they wouldn't really be able to read it. Yeah. Yeah. And then in the early writers, now we're seeing the association. So we're seeing maybe a D and a G for dog. Vowels are hard, so it's normal to see those, you know, we don't see them as much in early writing. But we know that's what they mean. We see some spaces between the words, and they can generally read what they've written. So here, a lot of parents start to get worried, like,“oh no, should I give them the right word?”“Like it's not spelled correctly?” We're not so worried about spelling at this point. Again, we're emphasizing that, yeah, let's just figure out what's what this letter and sound is. So dog...d....d...dog. That’s a D. The other thing that happens a lot at this phase is letter reversals. So, a D and a B. Very similar. Right? And so parents sometimes think, a lot people think this, actually that kids get confused because those look alike. And it's less that they look alike than they sound alike. Yeah. So it's not intuitive. But again, our ability to read depends on the sounds of those letters. And so we really are tuning into the sounds. Now, as adults, we do that processing so quickly that we don't notice. But we are putting those sounds together when we're reading. That is what we're doing. So just as kind of a reflection that the emergent writers, the pre-K through about first grade, early writers first and second grade, and then remember that we get into once we get to third grade, it's we're starting to instead are learning to read, we're reading to learn. So it kind of starts to flip. Parents can support their children by understanding that these stages, what there's a part of these stages, how we can provide opportunities that match that level of development. And just like we want to model reading for our kids, we also can help them by modeling how we use writing in everyday life. Right. So, letting them help with grocery list, that's one of my favorite ways, sending cards to friends and family, making signs. You know, if there's something going on they can help you make signs for it. They're also really cute when they make those signs. Journaling, leaving notes to remember important things. So what does that what does that look like? That's a long list. What's a good example for that? Yeah. So, all of those examples are what we would call authentic purposes for writing. Okay. So you know, sometimes, we have kids who will say like, “I'm not a writer.”“I don't like to write.” You can have reluctant readers and writers. And usually that comes from the fact that this feels like busywork to them. Like this feels like something that you're making up for me to do. So I think the antidote to that is to really do things that adults do. Like what do you use writing for? Why do we write? Right? Yeah. So we like to write to leave a note to somebody to get something at the store or remember something. Send a letter, send a nice note to someone, and reading stories. We can encourage kids to write stories, too. I remember when I was a kid, I loved to make, like, I would make up newspapers, like little, like where I would, like, draw a little cartoons and make, like, make up sessions. Now, we don't we don't use newspapers as much. Right. Yeah. Kid might not today? See what that is? But maybe a magazine or, you know, a comic book kind of thing. Yeah. Oh, my gosh, I just thought of this is, again, another thing that I'm thinking of from my childhood. The journaling piece, you know, writing down, sometimes we would have prompts. Sometimes, it was free. As an Iowa State fan, you'll appreciate this most. I had a few that were like, “I love the Cyclones.”“I like watching Iowa State Basketball.” From 2001, so I would have been nine, max. So it just makes me laugh as I think about that. Like, I actually enjoyed writing about that. Whereas if I had to just fill out a worksheet or whatever it may be wouldn't have been as enjoyable. So I just thought about that as you I talk about journaling. I love that story and cyclones is a hard word to spell. It is, but apparently I saw that word enough. You must’ve been good. Yeah, you saw it enough. I saw it enough, and it was associated. So. It was important to you. Too funny. But, the other thing is you wrote in our notes, we had the word bananas, and I don't know why that word just keeps popping out at me, but that might be a really good one if we need to practice writing our a’s, right? Right. But it's applicable, because Remember that song. It makes me remember that song that we sang in preschool, “Banana Nana Fo Fana.” Oh, yeah. Remember that. Yeah. The reason, again, the reason we do that is so that kids can have practice, like breaking apart the sounds of words and putting them back together. That helps them become better. So yeah, that's a good words is to sort of sound out, you know, as, as you're making your list. You said that song and I thought of a way less appropriate song that uses the word. Yeah, don't say that. I'm sure that our listeners will know what I'm referring to, but using music and all of that. So, yeah, okay. Writing songs now, right? Again, like writing songs and raps and rhymes. Yeah. So we've gone from like singing and rhyming. So now we're going to be like reading and writing those too. That would be fun. Yes. Oh my gosh, so fun. And I'm sure if there's lots of kids that would love that, too. And you'll be like, “you write it, and then you can perform it for me.” Exactly. Yeah. So, let's move into talking about selecting appropriate and engaging texts. You know, we've talked about how to pick books for infants and toddlers, how to pick books for preschoolers. So, let's talk about what it looks like to choose a book for our elementary school students. Yeah, so I'm going to talk about like two different examples, a couple of different examples. So, I'm going to talk about different ages, but I'm also going to talk about books that are just for fun versus books that are for practice. Okay. I didn't say this before, so let me say this now. That when kids are learning to read, and they're working on those phonics and those vowel-consonant patterns, there are books that are called decodable books. Okay. Where they can practice some of those patterns that they’ve learned. So if you ask your teacher, and they also have them at libraries, if you're in that phase where maybe we need more practice on that thing, you can get those decodable books. Now, I'm not going to say those books are super fun. They're kind of like, they're kind of boring. Like, they're just, you know, using certain words because we're working on practicing. But I will say kids feel so accomplished and motivated because they can read those independently. So there's definitely a place for that. Now. Fun books. Fun books. So, just like we've been saying before, of course, the things that your kids are interested in are books that they should they should have. Right. And, we're going to think about I'm always still going to say picture books. So this, you know, The Barn in Winter, and the reason I still like picture books is because the vocabulary is really good. We tend to see high-level vocabulary in picture books. So, words in this one, words like scattered. Now I am going to have several words where I don't see them, several pages where I don't see something that's really but you'll see in books, higher level vocabulary than you see on TV, so. Okay. We still like picture book. They’re visually attractive. Some kids really like to read nonfiction. So, books that are real things. So, this is a book about apple tree, the cycle of apple trees. Okay. So, you know, a lot of times where people are like,“my kids don't really like, I don't know, they don't like these stories.” Some kids just want to read about real things. They want to learn facts, and they want to read about nature, you know? Right. Whatever. So. How do trucks work? How do, you know, the mechanics of things? Right, right. The ocean, those sorts of things. All of those kinds of things. And I will say to, listen, if your child wants to read Captain Underpants, go ahead and let them. It's okay. It's fine. You might think it's annoying and not good literature. I'm not saying it's high quality, but the point is the fun and the that just practice. Okay, again, books that they'll read. That's a good book. Okay. So now we can start to get into chapter books too is the other thing that we're as kids. So we're increasing in now we're having less pictures. So this book is The One and Only Ivan. It's a Newbery Medal. Definitely will make you cry if you read this book. It's based on a true story. But you can see it's got. It's all words, but there's still spaces in between, you know, it's still doable. The thing about a chapter book is you're not going to read it all in one sitting. You know, you might read a few chapters at a time and then you're going to stop and pick it back up. Yes. So, as we kind of get older, they might start to pick up those longer books, those ones that they want to come back to, want to, they look forward to the stories. Maybe in those books. Another thing that so as we talk about reading different types of books, like chapter books, why is it important to read a variety of books on the same topic? Oh, yeah, this is a good point. So, I've said a couple of times, you know, about vocabulary. So vocabulary is, you know, knowing a lot of different words. And the thing about vocabulary is the more words you know, the easier it is to learn new words. And so a variety of text on the same topic really gives you one it's going to give you different kinds of vocabulary. Yep. So let me give you an example like space. If you have a kid that's into space, you can read a fiction book, a story that is about space or takes place in space. You can read a nonfiction book. You know, about space, something that's talking about the planet. You can read an article, even like a kid-friendly article. You could have a magazine or like a website, right? So all of these different kinds of ways to talk about space, and that’s really going to give you, just one that deep, rich vocabulary, but also just lots of background knowledge. And that's, you know, at the end of the day, it's easy to get lost in all of the skills we need. We need lots of skills to learn to read. At the end of the day, we have to understand it. You know, reading is about making meaning and so, and as I said last time, about connecting what you just read to what you already know. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Like that, that reading comprehension, that building that background knowledge, and all of those things. As you're talking about going into chapter books and reading longer stories, and we've talked about, like reading with your child versus just like sending them off to read, right? I think about, when I was a kid, I mentioned this just briefly, I think, in the last episode about reading with my dad, but we would read like even as I was in fourth and fifth grade, and we did get into chapter books, so we would have a book that, you know, like my sister and my dad and I would all lay in bed and read. And my favorite thing that my sister will tell is that he would fall asleep. And, like, I think I mentioned that, but he would legitimately fall asleep in the middle of a word. Oops. In the middle of a word, in the middle of a sentence. And my sister would just, she's tell stories about how she would get up, like, go get a glass of water, go to the bathroom, you know, do whatever. And then she would come back in nudge him and he would wake right back up and start to start right where he was We would look forward to, you know, finishing, maybe then we'd be like, okay, let's finish this page, and then we would have something to look forward to the next day. So reading and if I remember correctly, maybe I'm making this up, but there was times that like my sister would read some of it or I would read some of it, but I just remember my dad reading and falling asleep. But yeah, reading. That’s a great example. Right? Yeah. Of that relationship and how like you could have read that book by yourself. Yeah, probably. But you doing that together, you know, just created this family memory that so precious. And it made it enjoyable. And now we have stories, right? So, we aren't going to be able to get into, and we haven't, gone into every single detail about literacy in elementary. I know that, and I know there's probably still questions out there about,“okay, but what about this and what about that,” and we're going to dig into not really age-specific topics in a few of our other episodes, but if you have parents of elementary-aged kids that are wondering about maybe a specific grade or a specific age or a specific thing, one of the resources that you have shared is Reading Rockets, which is from the National Education Association. Can you tell us about what that is? And this is our reality section. Right. So, how can parents dive into that? What can they use? Just tell us about that resource. Yeah, so, I think I've said before, Reading Rockets is one of my favorite resources. It's all, you know, research-based. And, they have a whole section for parents. I think it's even called Reading 101. Okay. And so they have information for, you know, what reading could look like at every grade. And so for parents, if you just want to know what should be happening for your child at that grade, you can go and look at that. If you feel like, “uh, I'm not sure if my child is needing this particular milestone or benchmark,” you can get more information there to know if that's something that you should pursue. Now we are going to talk, and we're going to have one whole episode where we talk about struggling readers, and we're going to talk about, you know, other ways to use books, to help kids through certain, you know, any kind of certain issues. So we will get we will get to that. But there's lots of great information on that website. And there's a whole long dash, dash, dash to find the specific the Reading 101. But the website for that is just readingrockets.org. So if you go to readingrockets.org you can get into all of the resources. Dig into that Reading 101 guide. So that would be our challenge for you this week is if you have more questions, feel free to not only utilize what we have available, but also, that Reading Rockets website. Dig into certain ages, ages and stages, as we like to say. So that brings us now to Stop. Breathe. Talk., right? So we are going to bring in our colleague, Hailey. Coworker, colleague, friend, all of the things. She is a joy to have on, and she is coming at us with a question? Of course. Hey everyone. I am loving all of the reminders for parents to keep the fun and the play in reading. And this stage is my reality right now, so I definitely have questions. But firstly, I want to know your ideas for what fun and play can look like when I'm reading at home with my elementary aged kids? Absolutely. Yeah, this is in fact, I have read a research article recently that was looking at the impact of reading at home. And so we know that reading at home is beneficial for kids. What they found was reading at home, plus doing an activity, boosted that benefit even more. So what's an activity that you can do with reading? So, say you read a book about a dinosaur, fiction or nonfiction. You might draw a picture. Now, we're going to draw a picture of dinosaurs or use some clay to make a dinosaur, or even, like, go for a walk and have a fossil walk. You know, we're going to do an activity together that's related. I really like to do cooking. So if there's something in that somebody in the book made, like a dish that somebody, a character made, you could try to make that at home, right? Or find a recipe to do that. Just something that's related to what happened in the book. And again, doing those like, fine arts and crafts, the kids, you know, active things outside that really extends the learning of the book. Yeah. You bring in, you bring in those fun things. This is when fun Aunt Kenzie comes in and says, “all right, let's read a book.”“Let's do an activity.”“Make some puppets.” I mean, there's, you know, all of those, all of those fun things like redo the story, you know, let's recreate the story. Absolutely. So I'm going to throw it back at you, Hailey. And you're going to, you're going, because this is what I like to do. What is one thing that one of your kiddos is into? Well, my nine-year-old's a dinosaur kid always has been. Okay, we got that one. My daughter's into, like, unicorns princess fun. Absolutely. There's lots of good princess books. We could dress up like princesses. We can have tea all those things. So. And that's something I could be. Sorry, sorry. No. Go ahead. That's something I could be really intentional about when I do have time. Sometimes, in the moment, it's like we don't have time to come up with an activity. But when I do have time, I could plan ahead and I could kind of set things aside with a book. Right? Like that's an activity for another day when I need to grab something out of my hat. Right, and you have that quality time. It's like it's a snow day or, you know, right. Or you have somebody at home for some reason, that would be. Yeah, I'm certainly not saying like, do this every day after school. Yeah, but you saying fairy tales does remind me that my daughter went through this phase where she read all these books, and they were like “the flower fairies, the dance fairies, the...” whatever you could think of,“the cooking fairies.” All the fairies. I was so like, “oh, can we please find something else?” But she loved it. And so just the power of that, you know, interest, the repetition, you know, she just liked it. Just keep going, and they'll, you know, eventually move on to something else. Yeah. Maybe I can talk her into being the cleaning fairy for day. There we go. That would be awesome. Oh, my goodness, that's too funny. All right, well, thank you so much for that question, Hailey. It's always a joy to have you join us. And that brings us to the end of our time together today. So, thank you, Hailey. Thank you, Connie, for all of the amazing ideas and support for young Rita. Ritas the Ritas. Readers. That was not modeling good language, but that's okay. But you gave us great support for those young readers. Thank you to our listeners for joining us today on the Science of Parenting Podcast. Remember that there's lots of ways to find us. If you are a podcast listener, you can find this either on any of your favorite podcast places. You can find us online. We do have an online link you can go to ,or you can watch us on video, on YouTube, on Facebook, you can find us on a variety of places. So come along with us as we tackle the ups and downs, the ins and outs, the research and reality all around The Science of Parenting. The Science of Parenting is a research-based education program hosted by Mackenzie DeJong-Schelling, produced and edited by Brock Beirman, with contributions from Barbara Dunn-Swanson, Dr. Connie Beecher, Hailey Walker, and Morgan Newell. Send in questions and comments to parenting@iastate.edu and connect with us on Facebook. This program is brought to you by Iowa State University Extension and Outreach.