Monthly Archives: September 2019
Reading in Year 4
Posted by year4
By the time students get to Year 4 they have had a lot of experience with books and are often interested in making more of their own reading choices. Sometimes parents are happy with those choices and sometimes…not so much. Their desire to be more independent is one of the reasons why we try to provide students with as many different options as we can for reading. Those options include when to read, what to read and for what purpose to read.
In Class
During class time students will spend a lot of time learning strategies to better comprehend what they are reading. To do this teachers will often have a range of different short texts for students to interact with. This may include making inferences about poems, retelling stories, or researching about specific topics using nonfiction texts.
Students will also have time to enjoy some quiet reading with books of their own choosing. Often teachers will encourage students to discuss their book with others using prompts that connect with strategies or skills we are learning at that time. For example, right now we are focussed on improving how we retell texts. Using success criteria for retells, students will have opportunities to retell parts of their book in partner and/or group situations.
At Home
We ask that students read at least 4 times per week at home. For most students that will mean reading a book they have taken from the library or one they have at home already. Some students are continuing to develop their decoding and fluency skills so they will choose colour coded books similar to how they did it in Year 3. Each day they will go to the coloured tubs of books in the shared area and choose a book at a specific level as directed by their teacher. If this is the case with your child, the class teacher will discuss it with you.
How Can Parents Help?
There are many ways parents can support reading at home. First of all, it is important to encourage reading as an enjoyable activity. We believe that allowing children to have choices is an important part of enjoyment. If you are finding this difficult, these links collected by our Library will lead you to some suggested book lists.
As well as keeping the reading experience at home enjoyable for your children, here are some other ideas:
- Encourage them to read by buying or borrowing books. Model reading books as an enjoyable experience. If children see you reading books for pleasure, they may follow suit.
- Remind them to fill in their diary each evening so their teacher knows they are reading too.
- Continue to take opportunities to read with and to your child (they’re never too old for this!)
- Discuss the book. This could mean asking questions or, alternatively, you could get your child to ask you questions. Here are a few examples that might help:
