There is a two-fold challenge with many states adopting the Common Core Standards. First, how do teachers best prepare themselves to achieve the goals of the Common Core English Language Arts Standards. The second challenge is how to take advantage of this opportunity to educate parents on what they can do in the home that supports their child’s work in the classroom. A strong partnership between the classroom and the home help children achieve academic success.
Conversational Reading is a reading strategy that builds strong literacy skills by showing children how to get more from the books they read. Conversational Reading (CR) encourages children to read for meaning and shows them how to better understand a story through conversation. Strong comprehension skills are the foundation for children becoming proficient and confident readers.
Conversational Reading is a practice that correlates with the implementation of the Common Core English Language Arts Literacy State Standards and provides teachers with new curriculum materials and instructional practices that will be needed to implement the Common Core Standards. Conversational Reading practices— teaching critical and creative thinking skills, teaching how to ask essential questions and teaching how to make connections, transfer knowledge, problem solve and think critically— furthers the goals of the Common Core Standards.
Schools that adopt the Common Core Standards offer parents and caregivers an opportunity to learn and practice Conversational Reading (CR) in the home by demonstrating the benefits of creating the habit of reading aloud as well as the practice of talking about the story. The benefits of CR show that the most important outcome is not how many books children read but how many conversations they have about the books they read.
Principles Of Conversational Reading
~ There are 3 steps to Conversational Reading:
Read a book. Ask a question. Start a conversation.
~ Many of the benefits of the read aloud are lost if there is not the habit of talking to children about the story. Being read to does not automatically lead to literacy. The real link lies in the verbal interaction that takes place alongside the read aloud.
~ Many of the skills children need to get ready to learn to read are first learned in conversation.
~ Conversational reading models asking good questions—questions that takes you someplace in your thinking. Learning how to ask good questions is the basis of learning because it actually determines the quality of a person’s thinking.
~ The purpose for the conversations is to involve children in the story which help them better understand what they read. CR encourages the acquisition of critical and creative thinking skills as it builds strong comprehension skills.
~ Conversational reading helps children become more patient and thoughtful readers.
~ Reading to children in a family’s first language is enormously beneficial. Studies have shown that children with strong first language proficiency are more likely to develop greater English proficiency.
