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Category: Reading

How to Know if a Book is at the Wrong Reading Level for Your Child

How to Know if a Book is at the Wrong Reading Level for Your Child

Understanding Reading Level If you are homeschooling your child for the first time or supporting your child through distance learning, it can be difficult to pick out books that are “just right” for your child.  If your child has been in a school setting until this year, the easiest starting point is to reach out to your child’s teacher from last school year to get a good reading level. Schools use different systems for measuring the reading level of students….

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10 Amazing Alphabet Books for Teaching Letters and Sounds

10 Amazing Alphabet Books for Teaching Letters and Sounds

Alphabet books are a great way to build background knowledge in a young child who is just learning about books.  A parent can start sharing alphabet books with their child very early in life.  I often see parents get really stressed if their kids reach first grade and don’t know all their letters and sounds.  Sharing ABC books is a wonderful, low-stress way to teach the letters and sounds without it seeming like work. The Gunnywolf retold by Antoinette Delaney…

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Shared Reading With Kids at Home

Shared Reading With Kids at Home

Shared reading at school is an engaging way to model and teach young readers about how books work.  A teacher typically reads aloud a “big” book to the whole class, usually sitting on the carpet near the teacher.  This gives the teacher the chance to model fluent reading and demonstrate how readers think about the books they read.  Kids often chime in on parts of text that they know.  Teachers will stop and ask questions, ask students to make predictions,…

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Elbow Grease and the Value of Hard Work

Elbow Grease and the Value of Hard Work

I really love Elbow Grease by John Cena and highly recommend it for first shared reading book of the school year. During the spring, I used this book in a really fun Zoom meeting with second graders. The book: Elbow Grease by John Cena, illustrated by Howard McWilliam.  ISBN: 9781524773502. The author: John Cena is an actor and WWE wrestler (16 times world champion) who has written several popular children’s books, including  Elbow Grease vs Motozilla and Elbow Grease: Fast Friends. …

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